Wildlife Trade (Hansard, 1 December 1992)

§ Mr. Maclean

The main controls on the wildlife trade will remain unaltered but the establishment of the single market will make it impractical to retain controls on some imports and exports. We propose to compensate for this by strengthening controls within the United Kingdom.

There are controls throughout the European Community on trade in species protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). These cover imports from and exports to non-EC countries of all species listed on the CITES appendices and also include prohibitions on the sale of specimens of endangered species. They are supported by systems of permits and certificates issued and recognised by all member states. This system will remain fully operational on 1 January. Within the United Kingdom, we have an extensive system of controls to restrict sales of specimens of native species. Within Great Britain, this was strengthened in October to include a further 90 species and will remain unchanged from 1 January next year.

At present, we also control the import and export of many species not listed on CITES, under the Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act 1976. From 1 January, it will no longer be possible to retain these controls in relation to trade within the European Community. Given the future freedom of movement within the Community, we have looked carefully at whether we should continue to control trade in non-CITES species with non-EC countries. We have concluded that it is only sensible to do so where most other member states have similar controls, because otherwise our restrictions could be evaded very easily by routing trade through EC neighbours. This means that from 1 January 1993 controls under the Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act 1976 will apply only to the import of the skins of harp and hooded seal pups. We are writing to traders giving details of the species which will not require import export licences.

We are determined that these changes should not result in any significant loss of protection for species which require it. We urged the European Commission last year to bring forward proposals to strengehen EC-wide controls and this they have done. We have made good progress during our presidency of the European 154W Community towards achieving agreement on a new regulation which would extend EC controls on the wildlife trade to more species than are covered at present by the 1976 Act. We expect this regulation to be adopted next year. Further, freedom of movement within the Community will make it particularly important to have effective controls within member states and the Environment Council on 20 October took the view that a good deal of discretion on these should continue to rest with individual countries.

We therefore propose to strengthen controls applied within this country. As a first step, we propose to extend sales controls to some 200 species formerly protected by import and export restrictions and which our scientific advisers, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, consider would otherwise he at risk from trade. We propose too to review how the operation of all our wildlife sales controls may be made more effective. We are consulting interested organisations about the scope of the review which will be undertaken over the course of the next year.