CITES
CITES is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals. It was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature; the convention was opened for signature in 1973 and CITES entered into force on 1 July 1975. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild, it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 35,000 species of animals and plants. In order to ensure that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was not violated, the Secretariat of GATT was consulted during the drafting process; as of 2018, Secretary-General of the CITES Secretariat is Ivonne Higuero. CITES is one of sustainable use agreements in existence. Participation is voluntary, countries that have agreed to be bound by the Convention are known as Parties. Although CITES is binding on the Parties, it does not take the place of national laws.
Rather it provides a framework respected by each Party, which must adopt their own domestic legislation to implement CITES at the national level. Domestic legislation is either non-existent, or with penalties with the gravity of the crime and insufficient deterrents to wildlife traders; as of 2002, 50% of Parties lacked one or more of the four major requirements for a Party: designation of Management and Scientific Authorities. Funding for the activities of the Secretariat and Conference of the Parties meetings comes from a Trust Fund derived from Party contributions. Trust Fund money is not available to Parties to improve compliance; these activities, all those outside Secretariat activities must find external funding from donor countries and regional organizations such as the European Union. Although the Convention itself does not provide for arbitration or dispute in the case of noncompliance, 36 years of CITES in practice has resulted in several strategies to deal with infractions by Parties.
The Secretariat, when informed of an infraction by a Party, will notify all other parties. The Secretariat will give the Party time to respond to the allegations and may provide technical assistance to prevent further infractions. Other actions the Convention itself does not provide for but that derive from subsequent COP resolutions may be taken against the offending Party; these include: Mandatory confirmation of all permits by the Secretariat Suspension of cooperation from the Secretariat A formal warning A visit by the Secretariat to verify capacity Recommendations to all Parties to suspend CITES related trade with the offending party Dictation of corrective measures to be taken by the offending Party before the Secretariat will resume cooperation or recommend resumption of tradeBilateral sanctions have been imposed on the basis of national legislation. Infractions may include negligence with respect to permit issuing, excessive trade, lax enforcement, failing to produce annual reports.
CITES addressed depletion resulting from demand for luxury goods such as furs in Western countries, but with the rising wealth of Asia in China, the focus changed to products demanded there those used for luxury goods such as ivory or shark fins or for superstitious purposes such as rhinoceros horn. As of 2013 the demand was massive and had expanded to include thousands of species considered unremarkable and in no danger of extinction such as manta rays or pangolins; the text of the Convention was finalized at a meeting of representatives of 80 countries in Washington, D. C. United States, on 3 March 1973, it was open for signature until 31 December 1974. It entered into force after the 10th ratification by a signatory country, on 1 July 1975. Countries that signed the Convention become Parties by accepting or approving it. By the end of 2003, all signatory countries had become Parties. States that were not signatories may become Parties by acceding to the Convention; as of October 2016, the Convention has 183 parties, including the European Union.
The CITES Convention includes rules for trade with non-Parties. All member states of the United Nations are party to the treaty, with the exception of Andorra, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, South Sudan, East Timor, Tonga and Tuvalu. UN observer the Holy See is not a member; the Faroe Islands, an autonomous country in the Kingdom of Denmark, is treated as a non-Party to CITES. An amendment to the text of the Convention, known as the Gaborone Amendment allows regional economic integration organizations, such as the European Union, to have the status of a member state and to be a Party to the Convention; the REIO can vote at CITES meetings with the number of votes representing the number of members in the REIO, but it does not have an additional vote. In accordance with Article XVII, paragraph 3, of the CITES Convention, the Gaborone Amendment entered into force on 29 November 2013, 60 days after 54 (tw
Mouth
In animal anatomy, the mouth known as the oral cavity, buccal cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on the outside by the lips and inside by the pharynx and containing in higher vertebrates the tongue and teeth; this cavity is known as the buccal cavity, from the Latin bucca. Some animal phyla, including vertebrates, have a complete digestive system, with a mouth at one end and an anus at the other. Which end forms first in ontogeny is a criterion used to classify animals into protostomes and deuterostomes. In the first multicellular animals, there was no mouth or gut and food particles were engulfed by the cells on the exterior surface by a process known as endocytosis; the particles became enclosed in vacuoles into which enzymes were secreted and digestion took place intracellularly. The digestive products were diffused into other cells; this form of digestion is used nowadays by simple organisms such as Amoeba and Paramecium and by sponges which, despite their large size, have no mouth or gut and capture their food by endocytosis.
The vast majority of other multicellular organisms have a mouth and a gut, the lining of, continuous with the epithelial cells on the surface of the body. A few animals which live parasitically had guts but have secondarily lost these structures; the original gut of multicellular organisms consisted of a simple sac with a single opening, the mouth. Many modern invertebrates have such a system, food being ingested through the mouth broken down by enzymes secreted in the gut, the resulting particles engulfed by the other cells in the gut lining. Indigestible waste is ejected through the mouth. In animals at least as complex as an earthworm, the embryo forms a dent on one side, the blastopore, which deepens to become the archenteron, the first phase in the formation of the gut. In deuterostomes, the blastopore becomes the anus while the gut tunnels through to make another opening, which forms the mouth. In the protostomes, it used to be thought that the blastopore formed the mouth while the anus formed as an opening made by the other end of the gut.
More recent research, shows that in protostomes the edges of the slit-like blastopore close up in the middle, leaving openings at both ends that become the mouth and anus. Apart from sponges and placozoans all animals have an internal gut cavity, lined with gastrodermal cells. In less advanced invertebrates such as the sea anemone, the mouth acts as an anus. Circular muscles around the mouth are able to contract in order to open or close it. A fringe of tentacles thrusts food into the cavity and it can gape enough to accommodate large prey items. Food passes first into a pharynx and digestion occurs extracellularly in the gastrovascular cavity. Annelids have simple tube-like gets and the possession of an anus allows them to separate the digestion of their foodstuffs from the absorption of the nutrients. Many molluscs have a radula, used to scrape microscopic particles off surfaces. In invertebrates with hard exoskeletons, various mouthparts may be involved in feeding behaviour. Insects have a range of mouthparts suited to their mode of feeding.
These include mandibles and labium and can be modified into suitable appendages for chewing, piercing and sucking. Decapods have six pairs of mouth appendages, one pair of mandibles, two pairs of maxillae and three of maxillipeds. Sea urchins have a set of five sharp calcareous plates which are used as jaws and are known as Aristotle's lantern. In vertebrates, the first part of the digestive system is the buccal cavity known as the mouth; the buccal cavity of a fish is separated from the opercular cavity by the gills. Water flows in through passes over the gills and exits via the operculum or gill slits. Nearly all fish have jaws and may seize food with them but most feed by opening their jaws, expanding their pharynx and sucking in food items; the food may be held or chewed by teeth located in the jaws, on the roof of the mouth, on the pharynx or on the gill arches. Nearly all amphibians are carnivorous as adults. Many catch their prey by flicking out an elongated tongue with a sticky tip and drawing it back into the mouth where they hold the prey with their jaws.
They swallow their food whole without much chewing. They have many small hinged pedicellate teeth, the bases of which are attached to the jaws while the crowns break off at intervals and are replaced. Most amphibians have one or two rows of teeth in both jaws but some frogs lack teeth in the lower jaw. In many amphibians there are vomerine teeth attached to the bone in the roof of the mouth; the mouths of reptiles are similar to those of mammals. The crocodilians are the only reptiles to have teeth anchored in sockets in their jaws, they are able to replace each of their 80 teeth up to 50 times during their lives. Most reptiles are either carnivorous or insectivorous but turtles are herbivorous. Lacking teeth that are suitable for efficiently chewing of their food, turtles have gastroliths in their stomach to further grind the plant material. Snakes have a flexible lower jaw, the two halves of which are not rigidly attached, numerous other joints in their skull; these modifications allow them to open their mouths wide enough to swallow their prey whole if it is wider than they are.
Birds do not have teeth, macerating their food. Their beaks have a range of sizes and shapes according to their diet and are compose
Ivory trade
The ivory trade is the commercial illegal trade in the ivory tusks of the hippopotamus, narwhal and most African and Asian elephants. Ivory has been traded for hundreds of years by people in regions such as Greenland and Siberia; the trade, in more recent times, has led to endangerment of species, resulting in restrictions and bans. Ivory was used to make piano keys and other decorative items because of the white color it presents when processed but the piano industry abandoned ivory as a key covering material in the 1980s. Elephant ivory has been exported from Africa and Asia for centuries with records going back to the 14th century BCE. Throughout the colonization of Africa ivory was removed using slaves to carry the tusks, to be used for piano keys, billiard balls and other expressions of exotic wealth. Ivory hunters were responsible for wiping out elephants in North Africa about 1,000 years ago, in much of South Africa in the 19th century and most of West Africa by the end of the 20th century.
At the peak of the ivory trade, pre-20th century, during the colonization of Africa, around 800 to 1,000 tonnes of ivory was sent to Europe alone. World wars and the subsequent economic depressions caused a lull in this luxury commodity, but increased prosperity in the early 1970s saw a resurgence. Japan, relieved from its exchange restrictions imposed after World War II, started to buy up raw ivory; this started to put pressure on the forest elephants of Africa and Asia, both of which were used to supply the hard ivory preferred by the Japanese for the production of hankoscode: jpn promoted to code: ja, or name seals. Prior to this period, most name seals had been made from wood with an ivory tip, carved with the signature, but increased prosperity saw the unseen solid ivory hankoscode: jpn promoted to code: ja in mass production. Softer ivory from East Africa and southern Africa was traded for souvenirs and trinkets. By the 1970s, Japan consumed about 40% of the global trade. China, yet to become the economic force of today, consumed small amounts of ivory to keep its skilled carvers in business.
In 1942, the African elephant population has estimated to be around 1.3 million in 37 range states, but by 1989, only 600,000 remained. Although many ivory traders claimed that the problem was habitat loss, it became glaringly clear that the threat was the international ivory trade. Throughout this decade, around 75,000 African elephants were killed for the ivory trade annually, worth around 1 billion dollars. About 80% of this was estimated to come from illegally killed elephants; the international deliberations over the measures required to prevent the serious decline in elephant numbers always ignored the loss of human life in Africa, the fueling of corruption, the "currency" of ivory in buying arms, the breakdown of law and order in areas where illegal ivory trade flourished. The debate rested on the numbers of elephants, estimates of poached elephants and official ivory statistics. Activists such as Jim Nyamu have described current ivory prices for poached ivory and the dangers such activists face from organized poaching.
Solutions to the problem of poaching and illegal trade focused on trying to control international ivory movements through CITES. Although poaching remains a concern in areas of Africa, it is not the only threat for the elephants who roam its wilderness. Fences in farmlands are becoming more common; some CITES parties, led by Zimbabwe, stated that wildlife had to have economic value attached to it to survive and that local communities needed to be involved. Ivory was accepted in terms of non-lethal use of wildlife, but a debate raged over lethal use as in the case of the ivory trade. Most encounters between CITES officials and local bands of poachers erupted in violent struggle, killing men and women on each side, it was recognised that the "sustainable lethal use of wildlife" argument was in jeopardy if the ivory trade could not be controlled. In 1986, CITES introduced a new control system involving CITES paper permits, registration of huge ivory stockpiles and monitoring of legal ivory movements.
These controls were supported by most CITES parties as well as the ivory trade and the established conservation movement represented by World Wide Fund for Nature and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In 1986 and 1987, CITES registered 89.5 and 297 tonnes of ivory in Burundi and Singapore respectively. Burundi had one known live wild elephant and Singapore had none; the stockpiles were recognized to have come from poached elephants. The CITES Secretariat was admonished by the USA delegate for redefining the term "registration" as "amnesty"; the result of this was realised in undercover investigations by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a small underfunded NGO, when they met with traders in Hong Kong. Large parts of the stockpiles were owned by international criminals behind the poaching and illegal international trade. Well-known Hong Kong-based traders such as Wang and Poon were beneficiaries of the amnesty, elephant expert Iain Douglas-Hamilton commented on the Burundi amnesty that it "made at least two millionaires".
EIA confirmed with their investigations that not only had these syndicates made enormous wealth, but they possessed huge quantities of CITES permits with which they continued to smuggle new ivory, which if stopp
Phacochoerus
Phacochoerus is a genus in the family Suidae known as warthogs. It is the sole genus of subfamily Phacochoerinae, they are found in open and semiopen habitats in quite arid regions, in sub-Saharan Africa. The two species were considered conspecific under the scientific name Phacochoerus aethiopicus, but today this is limited to the desert warthog, while the best-known and most widespread species, the common warthog is Phacochoerus africanus. Although covered in bristly hairs, their bodies and heads appear naked from a distance, with only the crest along the back, the tufts on their cheeks and tails being haired; the English name refers to their facial wattles, which are distinct in males. They have distinct tusks, which reach a length of 25.5 to 63.5 cm in the males, but are always smaller in the females. They are herbivorous, but also eat small animal food. While both species remain common and widespread, therefore are considered to be of Least Concern by the IUCN, the nominate subspecies of the desert warthog known as the Cape warthog, became extinct around 1865.
The genus Phacochoerus contains two species. D'Huart, J. P. & Grubb, P.. A photographic guide to the differences between the Common Warthog and the Desert Warthog. Suiform Soundings 5: 4-8
Narwhal
The narwhal, or narwhale, is a medium-sized toothed whale that possesses a large "tusk" from a protruding canine tooth. It lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland and Russia, it is one of two living species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the beluga whale. The narwhal males are distinguished by a long, helical tusk, an elongated upper left canine; the narwhal was one of many species described by Carl Linnaeus in his publication Systema Naturae in 1758. Like the beluga, narwhals are medium-sized whales. For both sexes, excluding the male's tusk, the total body size can range from 3.95 to 5.5 m. The average weight of an adult narwhal is 800 to 1,600 kg. At around 11 to 13 years old, the males become sexually mature. Narwhals do not have a dorsal fin, their neck vertebrae are jointed like those of most other mammals, not fused as in dolphins and most whales. Found in Canadian Arctic and Greenlandic and Russian waters, the narwhal is a uniquely specialized Arctic predator.
In winter, it feeds on benthic prey flatfish, under dense pack ice. During the summer, narwhals eat Arctic cod and Greenland halibut, with other fish such as polar cod making up the remainder of their diet; each year, they migrate from bays into the ocean. In the winter, the male narwhals dive up to 1,500 m in depth, with dives lasting up to 25 minutes. Narwhals, like most toothed whales, communicate with "clicks", "whistles", "knocks". Narwhals can live up to 50 years, they are killed by suffocation when the sea ice freezes over. Other causes of death among young whales, are starvation and predation by orcas; as previous estimates of the world narwhal population were below 50,000, narwhals are categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as Nearly Threatened. More recent estimates list higher populations, thus lowering the status to Least Concern. Narwhals have been harvested for hundreds of years by Inuit people in northern Canada and Greenland for meat and ivory, a regulated subsistence hunt continues.
The narwhal was one of the many species described by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae. Its name is derived from the Old Norse word nár, meaning "corpse", in reference to the animal's greyish, mottled pigmentation, like that of a drowned sailor and its summer-time habit of lying still at or near the surface of the sea; the scientific name, Monodon monoceros, is derived from the Greek: "one-tooth one-horn". The narwhal is most related to the beluga whale. Together, these two species comprise the only extant members of the family Monodontidae, sometimes referred to as the "white whales"; the Monodontidae are distinguished by medium size, forehead melons, short snouts, the absence of a true dorsal fin. Although the narwhal and the beluga are classified as separate genera, with one species each, there is some evidence that they may rarely, interbreed; the complete skull of an anomalous whale was discovered in West Greenland circa 1990. It was described by marine zoologists as unlike any known species, but with features midway between a narwhal and a beluga, consistent with the hypothesis that the anomalous whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid.
The white whales and porpoises together comprise the superfamily Delphinoidea, which are of monophyletic origin. Genetic evidence suggests the porpoises are more related to the white whales, that these two families constitute a separate clade which diverged from the rest of Delphinoidea within the past 11 million years. Fossil evidence shows, they may have migrated to Arctic and sub-Arctic waters in response to changes in the marine food chain during the Pliocene. Narwhals are medium-sized whales, are around the same size as beluga whales. Total length in both sexes, excluding the tusk of the male, can range from 3.95 to 5.5 m. Males, at an average length of 4.1 m, are larger than females, with an average length of 3.5 m. Typical adult body weight ranges from 800 to 1,600 kg. Male narwhals attain sexual maturity at 11 to 13 years of age. Females become sexually mature at a younger age, between 5 and 8 years old, when they are around 3.4 m long. The pigmentation of narwhals is a mottled pattern, with blackish-brown markings over a white background.
They are darkest when become whiter with age. Old males may be pure white. Narwhals do not have a dorsal fin an evolutionary adaptation to swimming under ice, their neck vertebrae are jointed, like those of land mammals, instead of being fused together as in most whales. Both these characteristics are shared by the beluga whale; the tail flukes of female narwhals have front edges that are swept back, those of males have front edges that are more concave and lack a sweep-back. This is thought to be an adaptation for reducing drag caused by the tusk; the most conspicuous characteristic of the male narwhal is a single long tusk, a canine tooth that projects from the left side of the upper jaw, through the lip, forms a left-handed helix spiral. A tusk grows throughout life, it weighs around 10 kg. About one in 500 males has two tusks, occurring when the right canine grows ou
Mammal
Mammals are vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia, characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding their young, a neocortex, fur or hair, three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles and birds, from which they diverged in the late Triassic, 201–227 million years ago. There are around 5,450 species of mammals; the largest orders are the rodents and Soricomorpha. The next three are the Primates, the Cetartiodactyla, the Carnivora. In cladistics, which reflect evolution, mammals are classified as endothermic amniotes, they are the only living Synapsida. The early synapsid mammalian ancestors were sphenacodont pelycosaurs, a group that produced the non-mammalian Dimetrodon. At the end of the Carboniferous period around 300 million years ago, this group diverged from the sauropsid line that led to today's reptiles and birds; the line following the stem group Sphenacodontia split off several diverse groups of non-mammalian synapsids—sometimes referred to as mammal-like reptiles—before giving rise to the proto-mammals in the early Mesozoic era.
The modern mammalian orders arose in the Paleogene and Neogene periods of the Cenozoic era, after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, have been among the dominant terrestrial animal groups from 66 million years ago to the present. The basic body type is quadruped, most mammals use their four extremities for terrestrial locomotion. Mammals range in size from the 30–40 mm bumblebee bat to the 30-meter blue whale—the largest animal on the planet. Maximum lifespan varies from two years for the shrew to 211 years for the bowhead whale. All modern mammals give birth to live young, except the five species of monotremes, which are egg-laying mammals; the most species-rich group of mammals, the cohort called placentals, have a placenta, which enables the feeding of the fetus during gestation. Most mammals are intelligent, with some possessing large brains, self-awareness, tool use. Mammals can communicate and vocalize in several different ways, including the production of ultrasound, scent-marking, alarm signals and echolocation.
Mammals can organize themselves into fission-fusion societies and hierarchies—but can be solitary and territorial. Most mammals are polygynous. Domestication of many types of mammals by humans played a major role in the Neolithic revolution, resulted in farming replacing hunting and gathering as the primary source of food for humans; this led to a major restructuring of human societies from nomadic to sedentary, with more co-operation among larger and larger groups, the development of the first civilizations. Domesticated mammals provided, continue to provide, power for transport and agriculture, as well as food and leather. Mammals are hunted and raced for sport, are used as model organisms in science. Mammals have been depicted in art since Palaeolithic times, appear in literature, film and religion. Decline in numbers and extinction of many mammals is driven by human poaching and habitat destruction deforestation. Mammal classification has been through several iterations since Carl Linnaeus defined the class.
No classification system is universally accepted. George Gaylord Simpson's "Principles of Classification and a Classification of Mammals" provides systematics of mammal origins and relationships that were universally taught until the end of the 20th century. Since Simpson's classification, the paleontological record has been recalibrated, the intervening years have seen much debate and progress concerning the theoretical underpinnings of systematization itself through the new concept of cladistics. Though field work made Simpson's classification outdated, it remains the closest thing to an official classification of mammals. Most mammals, including the six most species-rich orders, belong to the placental group; the three largest orders in numbers of species are Rodentia: mice, porcupines, beavers and other gnawing mammals. The next three biggest orders, depending on the biological classification scheme used, are the Primates including the apes and lemurs. According to Mammal Species of the World, 5,416 species were identified in 2006.
These were grouped into 153 families and 29 orders. In 2008, the International Union for Conservation of Nature completed a five-year Global Mammal Assessment for its IUCN Red List, which counted 5,488 species. According to a research published in the Journal of Mammalogy in 2018, the number of recognized mammal species is 6,495 species included 96 extinct; the word "mammal" is modern, from the scientific name Mammalia coined by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, derived from the Latin mamma. In an influential 1988 paper, Timothy Rowe defined Mammalia phylogenetically as the crown group of mammals, the clade consisting of the most recent common ancestor of living monotremes and therian m
Fang
A fang is a long, pointed tooth. In mammals, a fang is a modified maxillary tooth, used for tearing flesh. In snakes, it is a specialized tooth, associated with a venom gland. Spiders have external fangs, which are part of the chelicerae. Fangs are most common in carnivores or omnivores, but some herbivores, such as fruit bats, have them as well, they are used to hold or swiftly kill prey, such as in large cats. Omnivorous animals, such as bears, use their fangs when hunting fish or other prey, but they are not needed for consuming fruit; some apes have fangs, which they use for threats and fighting. However, the short canines of humans are not considered to be fangs. Certain mythological and legendary creatures such as dragons and yakshas are depicted with prominent fangs; the fangs of vampires are one of their defining characteristics. The iconographic representation of some Hindu deities include fangs, to symbolize the ability to hunt and kill. Two examples are fierce warrior goddess Chamunda and god of death Yama in some iconographic representations.
Fangs are common among guardian figures such as Verupaksha in Buddhism art in China and East Asia, as well as Rangda in Balinese Hinduism. Tusk An overview of the diversity and evolution of snake fangs
