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Limits for shark trade under review
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 4, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The international body overseeing wildlife trade might throw a lifeline to sharks exported by the United States and Canada as it considers new limitations on commercial fisheries and timber. A meeting of the 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species will wade into commercial issues as never before, in hopes of intervening before species' survival reaches a serious level of risk, said its secretary-general, Willem Wijnstekers, on Sunday. The ongoing struggles to control elephant poaching and to protect tigers from extinction are also on the agenda of the 12-day gathering under CITES, a treaty that came into force in 1975. The conference will consider a European proposal to regulate the trade in the spiny dogfish, a small shark exploited for the fast food business, and the porbeagle, another shark valued for its meat and fin. Both sharks grow slowly, mature late and have few young. The United States and Canada, which are among the world's top three exporters of spiny dogfish, have signaled they might oppose the proposal, as has New Zealand, said Sonia Fordham of Oceans Conservancy in Washington. Another proposal would help protect sawfish, with a famously serrated snout, which are popular aquarium items and also exploited as food. Proposals need a two-thirds majority of voting countries.
[Last modified June 4, 2007, 01:35:17]
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