Big wins for African hornbills, vultures and songbirds at CITES CoP20!
Cites CoP20 delivers major outcomes for international bird conservation, strengthening protections for hornbills, vultures and threatened songbird species worldwide.
Header Image: Two White-backed Vultures in Kruger National Park, South Africa. © Paco Como
CITES CoP20 concluded last Friday in the historic city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. It delivered landmark outcomes for international bird trade and conservation affecting songbirds, African hornbills and vultures. BirdLife International advocated for decisions grounded in evidence-based science and applauds Parties for their leadership at CoP20.
Members of the BirdLife International Global Team were joined by our Partners Nigerian Conservation Foundation, Haribon Foundation, Burung Indonesia, Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) and Pronatura Noroeste.
CITES is the global convention for the management of international trade in endangered species. Governments meet at the Conference of the Parties (CoP) every three years to discuss wildlife trade and its global impacts, seeking to monitor and effectively regulate those species most threatened by unsustainable trade.
African hornbills received a historic win when Parties unanimously agreed to list two genera – together containing nine hornbill species – in Appendix II. This measure will strengthen trade monitoring and represents a significant commitment by Parties to the long-term conservation of these iconic birds. It also brings some parity with their cousins in Asia, most of which have been listed in Appendix II since the 1990s.
The CoP also strengthened the protection for African vultures, with White-backed and Rüppell’s Vultures transferred from Appendix II to Appendix I of the Convention, a move that practically prohibits all international commercial trade for these two species.
During discussions, BirdLife International strongly intervened in support of this proposal, which passed by consensus. This is hopefully just the beginning as five other African vulture species are threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List. We hope that Parties will also consider these for listing in Appendix I at the next CITES CoP. We believe that a wider listing is necessary to ensure the survival of these species that are crucial for their ecosystems.
BirdLife also went to this CoP to call for better representation of songbirds under CITES. The unsustainable songbird trade is a near-global phenomenon and requires urgent, global action. We have repeatedly highlighted that songbirds are underrepresented in the appendices of CITES and have also called for improved monitoring and data collection on species in trade.
The CoP agreed a suite of decisions which keep songbirds on the CITES agenda, and which take forward the recommendations of the 2023 Bangkok workshop on songbird conservation and trade.
Despite the Bangkok workshop’s call for Parties to submit additional songbird listing proposals, only one was put forward this time around. Parties agreed to list South America’s Great-billed Seed-finch in Appendix I, while five other Sporophila species were listed in Appendix II. This marks an important step in the right direction for the conservation of the finch, which is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.
Finally, Parties rejected the proposal to transfer Peregrine Falcon from Appendix I to Appendix II, citing ongoing conservation challenges, including avian flu and ongoing illegal killing, take and trade.
Across the two weeks, BirdLife International took part in five side events. We hosted two of our own: “CITES and Local voices”, which focused on the Safe Havens Initiative, and “Trade in African Vultures”. In addition, we co-organised and presented our work in three other side events: “African Hornbills”, “Global Songbird Crisis” and “A CMS Global Initiative”. These were all well-received and offered a great opportunity to showcase the work of BirdLife International and our Partners.
Together, the outcomes of CITES CoP 20 delivered big wins for African hornbills, vultures and songbirds and pave the way for another three years of work on international trade. We look forward to supporting Parties on the implementation of CITES, and to continue our work to protect birds from international trade through on-the-ground conservation led by our global Partnership and local communities. Working together brings us a step closer to ensure that next CoP land even more victories for birds.
