Fish and chips, coral jewelry and wooden musical instruments will take centre stage at a U.N. wildlife forum next week which seeks to curb the billion-dollar trade in endangered marine and tree species.
Commercially valuable species like the spiny dogfish and the porbeagle shark, the European eel, pink coral and rosewood and cedar trees -- all threatened by over-use -- feature high on the agenda of the June 3-15 meeting in The Hague.
The talks will also help shape the future of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), whose restrictions were once aimed at exotic species like leopards and parrots but are now focusing on more commercial species.
Look, banning the trade in valuable species does not perserve them. It simply encourages poaching and smuggling. What is needed here is property rights: that someone owns the resource and thus plans for its long term explaoitation, rather than leaving it vulnerable to hte tragedy of the commons. What's worse is that governments know this but they get railroaded byhhte idiots who don't.
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