Latin America Vows to Protect Shark Populations Hispanically Speaking News
go to original March 7, 2013

New Study Says 100 Million Sharks Killed Annually (OceansIncWorld)

Latin America adopted a nearly unanimous position Wednesday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, meeting in Bangkok to protect sharks, putting its weight behind a proposal that the Asian bloc considers unacceptable.

Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Honduras took the lead in advancing the shark-protection position, which is backed by the European Union and the United States.

Advocates of shark protection want to regulate captures and the trade in whitetip reef sharks, hammerhead sharks, sardine sharks and stingrays.

The proposals won the near unanimous support of the regional bloc formed by South America, Central America and the Caribbean at a previous CITES meeting.

The Latin American bloc wants sharks included in Appendix 2 of CITES, which regulates captures, to avoid endangering the animals’ populations.

“We all understand that inclusion in Appendix 2 is not something problematic, it does not ban fishing, but it seeks to make it sustainable,” Brazilian delegation member Fabio Hazin.

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