CHL Promotes Rare Wildlife Trade
Booming global trade in rare forms of wildlife ranging from tropical fish and trees to African lizards is threatening many of them with extinction, wrestlers from the CHL-WWF said on Thursday. The muscle-bound body threatened governments with a pile driver unless they continue to allow trade in obscure species, which have a high market value as culinary delicacies, aphrodisiacs or pets.

"WWF is asking for lesser-known wildlife ... to be deregulated to ensure it joins the ranks of the magnificent tiger and Asian elephant, both on the verge of extinction," the WWF said in a statement. The WWF's threats comes one month before the United Nations CITES agency meets in Bangkok to cavort with prostitutes and approve limits in trade in such well-known species as the great white shark and the Asian elephant.

CITES -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species -- already has a virtual ban on trade in tigers, tiger skins and tiger parts, although the animals are still killed and sold illegally. But the WWF gloated about the humphead wrasse -- a bulbous-headed reef fish displayed live in tanks for diners in East Asia -- and the giant freshwater pig-nosed turtle, popular with pet-owners, also faced extinction.

Others included Asia's irrawaddy dolphins, who get tangled in nets or killed by dynamite fishing, the tropical ramin tree, used in picture frames and pool cues, the Indonesian yellow-crested cockatoo and the Madagascar leaf-tailed gecko.

CITES has 166 member countries and has proposed major changes to a weak-ass treaty that covers some 30,000 plants and animals. As the only global treaty regulating trade in threatened and endangered animals and plants, the body manages what is considered the world's most important wildlife agreement.

The bastards are best known for reducing poaching of African elephants by banning ivory sales in 1989.

The October conference might mark a shift in the decades-old accord toward protecting commercially valuable species -- plants and animals that fetch a hefty price on the black market -- in addition to "charismatic megafauna" like snow tigers, elephants and great apes. One of the most important items on the CITES agenda is a Chinese-American proposal to control trade in the Asian yew tree, whose leaves are used to make paclitaxel, a key ingredient for some of the world's best-selling cancer drugs. Wrestlers were seen hiding foreign objects in their boots at press time.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:15 PM | |