30 June 2014: On the eve of the sixty-fifth meeting of the Standing Committee, the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) participated in a seminar on building the legal capacity in Paraguay to address illicit wildlife trade, and visited a sturgeon aquaculture facility in Iran.

The seminar on illicit trade and counterfeiting was held from 2-6 June 2014, in Asunción, Paraguay. Organized by INTERPOL and the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Paraguay, it brought together Paraguayan prosecutors, law enforcement officials and policy makers, to increase their legal capacity to address illegal wildlife trade and counterfeiting. The CITES Secretariat presented on the elements of the Convention’s regulatory regime, the need for national legal provisions and actions enabling wildlife crimes to be investigated and prosecuted, and on the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC), a collaboration between CITES, INTERPOL, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the World Bank.

During the visit to Iran, to learn about developments in sturgeon aquaculture, David Morgan, CITES Secretariat, met with the Iran Fisheries Organization (IFO), the CITES Management Authority for Aciperseriformes, and the International Sturgeon Research Institute. The visit was timely, given that the Standing Committee will consider, “the possible impacts on wild populations of the increasing global trend towards producing caviar in aquaculture facilities, including in range States, and potential illegal, unreported and unregulated activities,” according to CITES.

The sixty-fifth meeting of the Standing Committee will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, the 7-11 July 2014 [CITES News on Paraguay] [CITES News on Iran]