Representatives from 171 nations monitored by a small army of conservationists and wildlife advocates began debating dozens of measures Sunday, some highly contested, regulating the global trade in wildlife.
"You are making policy for the biodiversity of the future," Chairwoman and Dutch Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, Gerda Verburg, told some 2500 delegates from the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, better known as CITES.
"The stakes are high. The decisions we have to make are vital not only for today but for long into the future," she said.
Decimated by over-exploitation and smuggling, hundreds of endangered species ranging from orchids to elephants will get a hearing during the two-week gathering in The Hague. Orang-utans sold on the black market as exotic pets, wild tigers ground up into Chinese medicines, sharks scalped to make soup, rare hardwoods hewn into designer coffee tables - the global appetite for wild flora and fauna is seemingly inexhaustible.
During its first meeting in three years, CITES will consider measures that could determine the survival of African elephants, several species of gazelle, Ugandan leopards, great apes and a plethora of sea creatures.
Even before the opening ceremony the Standing Committee of CITES authorised the sale of 60 tonnes of African ivory to Japan, in a controversial decision condemned by some conservation groups.
Legal and illegal trade in wild fauna and flora generates tens of billions of dollars (euros) in revenue every year, even after commercial fishing and the timber industry are set aside. In some cases, safeguards that helped plants and animals recover from near extinction may be eased or removed. Since coming into force in 1975, CITES has afforded some measure of protection to approximately 33,000 species, more than 80 percent of them in the plant kingdom.