Ensuring governments keep their promise to seahorses at the 34th CITES Animals Committee

Governments have made promises to protect seahorses from illegal and unsustainable trade. At the upcoming 34th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Animals Committee, taking place July 13-17 in Geneva, Switzerland, Project Seahorse will be there to help make sure governments follow through. Our program leader, Dr. Sarah Foster will be in attendance as the Focal Point for Global Fisheries and Trade for the IUCN SSC Seahorse, Pipefish and Seadragon Specialist Group, which we host.

The Animals Committee’s job is to follow up on the scientific and technical Decisions – formal mandates – that governments agreed to at the last CITES Conference of the Parties (CoP), held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. At that meeting, we helped secure several important Decisions for seahorses: boosting efforts to combat illegal trade, encouraging governments to plan and implement action on illegal and unsustainable trade, and urging countries to monitor their wild seahorse populations so they can tell whether their actions are working.

Decisions on illegal trade now sit with the CITES Standing Committee; the sustainability and monitoring Decisions come to this Animals Committee. Securing these Decisions was only the first step, but with support from the Principality of Monaco, our long-standing champion for seahorse conservation, we have developed guidance documents to help governments act on them. These documents include guidance on the release of seahorses into the wild, national plans of action, and adaptive monitoring programs. Together with Monaco, we are bringing this guidance to the Animals Committee as agenda document (AC34 Doc 39).

This meeting will also launch two other processes relevant to seahorses: the Review of Significant Trade, which checks whether countries are making defensible sustainability assessments for their exports of wild animals, and a resolution on captive breeding, aimed at catching cases where wild-caught animals are being passed off as captive-bred. Seahorses have shown up in the trade data flagged for both, so we will be reviewing that evidence closely to make sure any concerning trade is examined for sustainability and legitimacy.

Committee meetings like this one draw far less attention than the CoPs, but they are where the follow-through happens. This work unfolds in conference rooms, not oceans, but done well, it reduces the pressures seahorses face in the wild. We’re grateful to Monaco for their continued partnership, and proud to represent seahorses in this work.