Defenders Celebrates Successful Listing of Sharks, Rays and Sawfish!

Over 400 million years ago, these creatures began roaming the world’s oceans. Now, after centuries of biological development, they serve an essential role in keeping the ecosystem balanced and the food chain regulated. But today, they’re at risk. For years, sharks, sawfish and rays have faced a variety of threats, from being accidentally caught up in fishermen’s nets, taken for their fins, and losing vital habitat to shipping traffic, pollution, and a changing climate. These species have been deliberately caught and slaughtered for their meat, snouts, fins and gill plates, which are incorporated into a variety of dishes or used for supposed medicinal purposes. These gruesome practices have been around for some time now, but are finally starting to gain some negative attention. A growing number of countries are beginning to acknowledge the ecological importance that sharks and rays play in keeping our oceans healthy.

Alejandra Goyenechea and Rosa Indenbaum attend CMSCOP11 in Quito, Ecuador to advocate for sharks & manta species.

Recently, twenty-one imperiled species of sharks and rays gained international protection when they were added by consensus to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) Appendices at a recent multi-nation meeting on conservation of migratory species held in Quito, Ecuador. This means that all Member Parties of the CMS will have to work together to create stronger conservation plans to restore these species and protect the habitats they rely on – measures that will particularly help these animals as they migrate. Species finally granted these new international protections include the great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, thresher sharks, silky shark, devil rays, reef manta ray and sawfishes. It was the largest number of shark and ray species ever listed by the Member Parties of the CMS.

It was a mark of real progress to see so many nations working together for this goal; representatives from Latin American countries, Europe, the United States and a number of other nations, are working countless hours to promote the significance of recovery for these ecologically important species. We are proud to say that Alejandra Goyenechea, our Senior International Counsel, has played a key role by advocating in favor of these proposals and working with important decision makers to see them through. We continue to advocate – nationally and internationally – for stronger regulations and more protections for these essential but vulnerable species.

John Yeingst is Defenders Communications Coordinator