The big loser at CITES Conference of the Parties 20 was the saiga antelope, native to host nation Uzbekistan
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan––Elephants, rhinos, giraffes, white-tipped sharks, peregrine falcons, and the Vantara captive wildlife sanctuary in Gujarat state, India, were among the big winners at the twentieth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species [CITES].
CITES, a global treaty brought into effect by the United Nations on July 1, 1975, is by far the biggest and most influential regulator of international wildlife commerce, including 185 member nations.
Endangered saiga antelopes, native to the central Asian plains, may have been the big losers at the CITES meeting, called CoP20 for short, the first ever held in central Asia.
The peregrine falcon was the only other animal native to host nation Uzbekistan that was spotlighted during the proceedings.
(Beth Clifton collage)
The saiga saga
The 11-day CoP20 conference concluded on December 5, 2025 at the Silkroad Samarkand Expo Center in Samarkand, at almost the opposite end of from the last remaining Uzbekistan saiga population.
Saiga antelope, once found across Asia and in the Pleistocene epoch, even in parts of what are now Alaska and Canada, now live mostly in three widely separated herds in Kazakhstan, north of Uzbekistan, with smaller numbers in Mongolia and Russia.
A small, reintroduced saiga antelope population may also survive in the Russian-occupied Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve in Kherson, Ukraine.
Four days into CoP20, the CITES delegates voted to allow Kazakhstan to export up to 11 tons of saiga antelope horns per year for the next three years.
The New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society “warned that these quotas—equivalent to at least 25,000 male saiga per year—pose a risk to the species,” said Wildlife Conservation Society publicist Nat Moss.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Boom-&-bust cycles
More than a million saiga antelope roamed Asia toward the end of the 20th century, but climate change and uncontrolled market hunting brought a population crash so severe that the Convention on Migratory Species, a sub-group of CITES, proposed an Appendix II or “endangered” listing for saiga antelope at CoP12 in 2002.
Warned United Nations Environmental Program division of environmental conventions deputy director Robert Hepworth at that time, “The hunting pressure on these animals has gone far beyond what the populations can sustain.”
Outbreaks among saiga antelope of several infectious diseases subsequently caused the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to “Red List” the species as “Critically Endangered.”
But saiga antelope in recent years seemed to be recovering.
Recounted Moss in a November 18, 2025 Wildlife Conservation Society media release, “The International Union for the Conservation of Nature ‘Red List’ status of the saiga antelope has shifted from ‘Critically Endangered’ to ‘Near Threatened.’ But the saiga has a long history of boom and bust population cycles, and a precautionary approach is imperative.”
Vantara
The first high-profile controversy before CoP20, actually addressed a day before CoP20 actually convened, was a review of a September 2025 report from the CITES Secretariat asking India to “not issue any further import permits” because of alleged irregularities involving acquisition of animals by Vantara.”
Vantara was described by the Reuters news service as “a 3,500-acre zoo in Gujarat state, Inida, run by the philanthropic arm of the Reliance conglomerate led by Mukesh Ambani and his family,” reputedly the most affluent family in Asia.
The CITES Secretariat report was contradicted on September 15, 2025 by a two-judge Indian Supreme Court panel.
Justices Pankaj Mithal and P.B. Varale “cleared Vantara of wrongdoing,” Reuters reported, based on the findings of a special investigative team that included former Supreme Court Justice J. Chelameswar; R.S. Chauhan, former Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand & Telangana High Courts; former Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale; and Anish Gupta, additional commissioner of customs.
ANIMALS 24-7 analysis introduced as evidence
Profiling Vantara in January 2025, and revisiting the Vantara controversies in March 2025, ANIMALS 24-7 concluded that the biggest issue seems to be that Vantara is operating much more like a sanctuary, as defined by the Association of Sanctuaries, American Sanctuary Association, and Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, than like a zoo as recognized by CITES.
(See Vantara: billionaire-built zoo/sanctuary has conservationists in a dither and Why is Vantara hiring flacks & lawyers instead of just explaining itself?)
The two ANIMALS 24-7 reports were introduced as evidence during the Indian Supreme Court hearings.
The concept of a “sanctuary” for captive wildlife does not exist in most nations, nor in the language of CITES.
The Indian delegation to CoP20 “affirmed the country’s commitment to CITES compliance,” Reuters summarized, but “Belgium and at least one conservation group, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, pushed to suspend [wildlife] exports to India until concerns were addressed.”
The CITES Secretariat recommendation to that effect “was reversed,” according to Reuters, “after many countries including India, the United States, Japan and Brazil said the measure was premature, with some also saying there was no evidence of illegal imports into India.”
(Twitter photo)
Elephant ivory, rhino horn, giraffe trophies
The most publicized and perhaps most bitterly fought issues at CoP20 were applications by various southern African nations to permit exports of elephant ivory, rhino horn, and giraffe body parts as trophies.
The elephant ivory and rhino horn issues have roiled every CITES Conference of the Parties since CoP7 moved both African and Asian elephants to Appendix I, forbidding all commerce in elephants and elephant parts.
Reported Journal of African Elephants editor Adam Cruise on December 1, 2025, “Southern Africa’s conservation story – the one the region has been selling internationally for years – finally met a hard wall” at CoP20.
“The collapse of ivory, rhino horn and giraffe trade proposals at CITES CoP20 was not a surprise,” Cruise assessed. “What was surprising is how thoroughly the region’s long-standing justifications fell apart under scrutiny.
“These were not strategic setbacks”
“These were not strategic setbacks,” Cruise explained. “They were systemic failures, failures of argument, failures of credibility, and failures of a conservation model that has relied more on rhetoric than ecological reality.”
Cruise called “Namibia’s ivory-sale gambit to offload 46 tons of stockpiled ivory on the international market, rejected by almost 79% of parties, the clearest signal yet that the world no longer buys the storyline of southern African exceptionalism.
“Proposals for fewer restrictions on rhino horn – one for white rhinos, another for black rhinos – were dispatched with equal force. And a multicountry attempt to weaken giraffe protections also died quickly,” Cruise recounted.
“Policy failure #1”
“Policy failure #1,” Cruise enumerated, was that “For years, southern African officials have pointed to apparently ‘healthy’ elephant and rhino populations as proof that their conservation systems justify trade.”
However, Cruise pointed out, “Rhino numbers – especially in South Africa – have been maintained largely through coercive, intervention-heavy, quasi-agricultural models that include domestic markets, dehorning, sedation cycles, intensive fencing, and 24-hour armed guarding.
“This is not ecological resilience,” Cruise charged. “It is industrial wildlife management. And it is wildly expensive.
“Elephant numbers are similarly misrepresented,” Cruise continued. “Concentrations in some areas are touted as ‘overpopulation,’ even when those same elephants are restricted by fences, pumped water points, and spatial constraints that artificially inflate local densities while obscuring regional declines and poaching hotspots.
“CITES parties saw through this,” Cruise said. “Population numbers, detached from ecological context, no longer persuade anyone.”
“Policy failure #2”
This led Cruise to “Policy failure #2: the ‘sustainable use’ narrative has become detached from ecological reality.”
Cruise pointed to “South Africa’s catastrophic expansion of the captive lion breeding industry, built under the same ‘sustainable use’ mandate now being used to justify ivory and horn trade, even as lions have been all but extirpated from the South African wild.
“Policy failure #3”
As an example of “Policy failure #3: misreading global politics,” Cruise denounced “A reliance on stockpiling ivory and horn, as if they are stable financial assets, ignoring the political and market realities that make those stockpiles effectively worthless on the legal market.
“China – once the primary consumer market – has since closed its ivory trade,” Cruise pointed out. “Most Asian states, with the exception of Japan, have adopted bans or strict restrictions.
“African range states outside the south remain traumatized by the poaching waves of the 2000s and early 2010s. There is no appetite for reopening markets. No political interest in testing trade experiments again.
“Policy failure #4”
“Policy failure #4,” Cruise said, was “ignoring – or denying – the legacy of the 2008 ivory sale. The 2008 CITES-approved ivory sale, in which southern African countries were authorized to sell more than 100 tons of ivory to China and Japan, is still seen by many African and Asian nations as a prelude to widespread poaching.
“Parties who lost tens of thousands of elephants during the years that followed will not risk another legal ivory pathway – no matter how small, how controlled, or how isolated.
“Policy failure #5”
“Policy failure #5,” Cruise wrote, is “a conservation economy built on speculation, not stability. Southern Africa has consistently argued that wildlife must pay for itself. But its preferred mechanism – consumptive commercial trade – has proven incapable of delivering reliable results.
“Trophy hunting revenues are concentrated in a few operators rather than dispersed among communities. Ivory sales have been politically dead for more than a decade. And the giraffe proposal exposed how stretched the logic has become – attempting to justify regulatory weakening based on narrow, trade-driven incentives rather than ecological considerations.”
Cruise hoped that CoP20 will bring a complete reassessment and rejection of the consumptive use conservation model that has now dominated southern African wildlife management for more than 65 years, historically promoted by the African Wildlife Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund.
First sharks to get top level CITES protection
Oceanic whitetip sharks, elevated to Appendix I by CoP20 on November 27, 2025, became the first shark species to receive top level CITES protection, “with a complete ban on international trade,” exulted Wildlife Conservation Society director of shark and ray conservation Luke Warwick.
Recounted Wildlife Conservation Society publicist Nat Moss, “On the floor during the vote, 13 Parties [national delegations] spoke out on behalf of the oceanic whitetip proposal, championed by Panama, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Oman, Mauritania, Pakistan, Bahamas, Gabon, Djibouti, Zimbabwe, Canada, Chile, Lebanon, and Fiji.
“Oceanic whitetips have suffered declines of more than 80-90% in just three generations,” Moss explained, “driven by relentless fishing pressure and a lucrative illegal fin trade that far exceeds what appears in official records. Appendix I listing will finally end international commercial trade, remove incentives for illegal take, and give this iconic species a fighting chance to recover.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
The day of the iguana
World Animal Protection, formerly the World Society for Animal Protection [WSPA] on December 5, 2025 rejoiced on the concluding day of CoP20 at the success of Ecuador, Kenya, and Uganda in winning “the transfer of the Galápagos land iguana and the Galápagos marine iguana to Appendix I, “underscoring the global significance of safeguarding the unique natural and cultural heritage of the Galápagos Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”
Also pronouncing himself “super excited” over the outcome of CoP20 was wildlife artist Barry Kent MacKay, because, he explained to ANIMALS 24-7, “Canada and the U.S. lost in their attempt to lower the amount of protection CITES provides for the peregrine falcon.
Peregrine stays on Appendix I
“It stays on CITES Appendix I,” MacKay said, “meaning no international trade for ‘primarily commercial’ purposes, like falconry, is allowed, and any other international trade in specimens, including live birds, dead birds or their parts, or eggs, requires thorough vetting to assure it does not threaten species survival.
“The species is found on every continent except Antarctica,” MacKay continued. “There are many distinctive populations and subspecies, including some that are not surviving as well as those in Canada and the U.S.
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
“The Canadian and U.S. position,” MacKay assessed, “seemed to be that they didn’t care about other populations. Their mathematical modelling indicated there could be a sustainable removal of a carefully regulated number of North American birds, with the primary market being North Africa and the Middle East.”
Please donate to support our work:
More related posts:
Discover more from Animals 24-7
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
