A recent report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) says Europe serves as the prime destination for exported Latin American wildlife not listed for protection under the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). Cites regulates world trade in over 40,000 wild animals and plants listed in its appendices to ensure this commerce doesn’t threaten their survival. Each species is listed in one of three appendices to reflect its conservation status and the trade restrictions that apply to it. But with biodiversity plummeting around the world, particularly in Latin America, conservation experts worry increasingly about the trafficking of species that have yet to go through the Cites-listing process. They point in particular to species not yet listed even though Latin American countries have earmarked them for protection. These, they say, do not trigger sufficiently strong enforcement action when they are discovered to have been smuggled... [Log in to read more]