NATIONAL 3 -(Spotlight Weekly)

Wanted: Vigilance

More than two decades after Nepal became a signatory to CITES, it is yet to live up to its obligations

By A CORRESPONDENT

It's easy to make commitments. But it's equally hard to live up to it. And that is something Nepal has "demonstrated" by easily signing the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) in 1975 and by failing to implement the convention's provisions even today.


A leopard : Under threat

"No law has been passed which directly implements CITES in Nepal," says a report titled "CITES compliance in Nepal." Having signed the convention 24 year ago, the government thought the existing laws would cover the provisions in the convention that prohibits the trade on endangered species.

What kept the governments "optimistic" were legislation including the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1973, the Forest Act 1993, the Export and Import Act 1957 and the Customs Act 1962. The government became more "confident" after it declared it would ban all export of wildlife and its derivatives in 1992.

But, experts say that is not enough. The existing laws have created more confusions. The legal provisions are interpreted in different ways at different places. As a result, legal actions against offenders vary according to places.

One striking example is offered by Mangal Man Shakya, General Secretary of Nepal Forum for Environment Journalist (NEFEJ), who is one of the three authors of the CITES compliance in Nepal. The other two are Colin Pringle and Chris Murgatroyd.

Here is the case: A warden in Parsa arrested a poacher who had killed a tiger and was later sentenced to jail for 25 years. The legal provision for tiger poaching is a penalty of 100,000 Rupees or 15 years imprisonment or both.

A District Forest Officer (DFO) in Bardiya arrested a poacher who had killed a rhino. He however freed himself after paying the penalty of 100,000 Rupees. The law requires rhino-poachers to either pay 100,000 Rupees or serve an imprisonment for 15 years or both.

The poacher who had killed tiger got the punishment more than what has been legally provisoned and the one who had killed rhino easily went free. Why the difference? "It was because one of them was arrested by a warden and the other by a DFO," says Shakya.

Wildlife experts say the legal treatments against poachers and wildlife traffickers differ according to places and the persons they are arrested by. They also point at the inadequate manpower hindering the checking of illegal wildlife trade. "Our custom officials, police, warden and other related professionals need to be trained first."

According to Dr. Tirtha Man Maskey, Director General at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, strong monitoring units are required to be set up in the fields. "At present among the concerned agencies we lack coordination, awareness and monitoring."

Having realized that the existing laws cannot be sufficient to implement CITES in the country, the officialdom has already drafted the CITES Act. "The Ministry of Forest has the draft and hopefully it will be passed by the winter session of the Parliament," says Dr. Maskey.

The need to enact a separate CITES Act comes at a time when news of smuggling of different wildlife contraband through and from Nepal continues to trickle in. Take for instance the case of shahtoosh, the wool harvested from the endangered Tibetan antelope commonly known as chiru.

Renowned international magazines like Time and National Geographic have covered the news items that the "king of wools" is smuggled out from China through Nepal to Indian state Kashmir where the wool is weaved into shawl. The final product then moves toward developed countries in Europe and Japan where each item fetches more than 5,000 US Dollars.

Reports also have it that the finest wool is also bartered with tiger bones in the remote villages in the far-western districts. Wildlife experts fear that the barter trade has threatened the existence of Nepalese tigers estimated at around 200. Both tiger and chiru have been enlisted as endangered species by CITES.