Reptile & Amphibian Forums

CITES is great for the conservation of animals, and is really doing it's job.
The only thing that's wrong with it, is that it restricts shipping chameleons through europe, canada and the US.
Living in Canada, it's hard to get my hands on any nice specimens of anything, with the exception of veileds (which I have to look for out of the mass of pet stores and nation-wide retailers...you're shopping blind in those cases).

If CITIES permitted shipping of chameleons through Canada, the US and Europe (at least with a much much smaller fee!!!) then I believe the breeding programs in europe and Canada would be much more successful. Canadians have little or no choice over the sire/doe of their animals, and often have to pay very hefty prices.

As far as I know, there isn't any risk of the chameleons' wild numbers deteriorating if shipping is permitted freely (or at least with supervision or liscenscing).
I am quite sure the effect of free shipping between Europe, Canada and the US would be very positive, and captive numbers would increase as a result.

CITIES should still be in effect on endangered north-american/euopean native animals (many turtles and tortoises).

Anyone have the same opinion? If there is anythng wrong with my ideas please explain, I'm no expert on CITES

Im totally not sure why they do it that way
but my guess and only a GUESS is it would be easier to smuggle animals if they didnt

Hey,
about the amount of chams in europe. I live in belgium and if i see the offer of CB chams here, i dont complain. veiled, panther, bradypodium, dilepsis, jacksoni and a lot more.

Well, remember the orignal purpose for CITES. It was to control and document the removal of organisms from wild populations, and as a result to keep vulnerable species from becoming rare and endangered. For species that had commercial value and had somewhat limited ranges, it was an attempt to control the amount of wild collection through control of trade. The cost of shipping or what routes through particular countries has nothing to do with it. That is just a side effect of trying to enforce or work within it. If the country where an organism lives can't show factually that the species is stable and tolerating removal for trade, they are supposed to stop exportation until they can if ever. Madagascar is in that boat now. Most of the time there is simply little or no information on the species' condition in the wild to make the better decision, and I'll bet you that veiled chams are no exception. Signatory nations can impose trade restrictions on each other or decide not to allow trade in some organisms for political reasons. Not all nations are signatories to CITES and many who are simply ignore it if the business is good. Politics also gets into it when countries negotiate one species' trade over another to get some type of deal. The cost of a permit has very little to do with CITES...and more to do with each nation's agency that manages trade and what it costs that agency to do it.

CITES isn't perfect, no international treaty is. CITES is often blamed for trade issues that have nothing to do with conservation of wild populations. A lot of people expect CITES to solve all our plant and animal trade disputes when it was not designed to do that. The USFWS has several CITES information pages online that explain a lot about the purposes and mechanics of the treaty and who signed it. There are meetings every 2nd year to go over specific trade issues among member nations too. The pages usually have a summary of what was discussed etc.