No Legal Caviar Exports This Year

GENEVA, Switzerland, January 5, 2006 (ENS) - International trade in caviar from wild sturgeons will not be allowed until exporting countries strengthen controls and promote sustainable fishing, the global body that controls trade in endangered species said Tuesday. The survival of all species of sturgeons has been considered to be at risk since 1998.

The Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, said in a statement that it is "unable to publish the 2006 export quotas for caviar and other sturgeon products until exporting countries provide more information about the sustainability of their sturgeon catch." This position amounts to a temporary ban on the legal export of caviar.

The 169 CITES member countries have set strict conditions for permitting caviar exports in an effort to control poaching and the lucrative black market in caviar.

To have its proposed quota published, a government must show that trade is not detrimental to the long term survival of the species.

This sevruga sturgeon, also called star sturgeon or stellate sturgeon, Acipenser stellatus, was caught in the Ural River Delta, at Guriev, Kazakhstan. (Photo © Johnny Jensen courtesy CITES)

“Countries wishing to export sturgeon products from shared stocks must demonstrate that their proposed catch and export quotas reflect current population trends and are sustainable,” said CITES Secretary-General Willem Wijnstekers.

“To do this they must also make full allowance for the amount of fish caught illegally,” he said.

The Secretariat said that information recently provided by the sturgeon exporting countries bordering the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea/lower Danube River, and the Heilongjiang/Amur River on the Sino-Russian border indicates that many of the sturgeon species in these shared fishing grounds are suffering serious population declines.

The Secretariat is concerned that "the proposed quotas, while lower than for previous years, may not fully reflect the reductions in stocks or make sufficient allowance for illegal fishing."

The Secretariat said it "remains hopeful" that the exporting countries will supply the missing data that may allow international trade to resume.

But the CITES system only allows sturgeon products to be exported during the year in which they are harvested and processed, so the Secretariat said "it is currently not possible to export caviar and other sturgeon products from shared stocks."

Iranian caviar from the Caspian Sea (Photo courtesy Pilot Guides)

Consumers will still be able to purchase this legal caviar as long as supplies last in shops and with online distributors.

As caviar populations declined during the 1990s, the CITES member countries decided to place all sturgeon species that remained unlisted on its Appendix II, effective from 1 April 1998.

Appendix II includes species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival.

Since then, all exports of caviar and other sturgeon products have had to comply with strict CITES provisions, including the use of permits and specific labeling requirements.

In 2001, CITES responded to high levels of poaching and illegal trade in the Caspian Sea by agreeing on a temporary ban. Extensive discussions and stronger actions by the range states were required before the annual quotas could be agreed for 2002 to 2005.

With the agreement of the countries where sturgeons are found, known as range states, the rules on how to set quotas were made even more rigorous in 2004.

To ensure sturgeon survival, the measures taken by exporting countries must be complemented by regulations in importing countries such as the European Union and the United States, the Secretariat said.

They are obligated to ensure that all imports are from legal sources, and they must establish registration systems for their domestic processing and repackaging plants and rules for the labeling of repackaged caviar.

For people around the world, the unfertilized sturgeon roe called caviar is a delicacy. (Photo credit unknown)

But many key importing countries have still not put these measures in place. "Governments need to fully implement the measures that they have agreed to ensure that the exploitation of sturgeon stocks is commercially and environmentally sustainable over the long term," he said.

Sturgeons are among the world's most valuable wildlife resources. These northern hemisphere fishes can be found in large river systems, lakes, coastal waters and inner seas throughout Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Ukraine, other European countries and North America.

For the range states, sturgeons are a major source of income and employment, as well as an important element of the local food supply. Current trends in illegal harvest and trade put all these benefits at risk.

To ensure the long term health of the sturgeon fisheries, many range states are establishing sturgeon hatcheries, and taking measures to stamp out illegal fishing.

Regulation of international trade alone will not ensure sturgeon survival, CITES says. Because caviar is a popular local delicacy in sturgeon range states, their governments also must focus on strengthening controls over the domestic trade.

In 2001 CITES estimated the legal caviar trade to be worth some $100 million annually. Because prices of illegal caviar vary widely from country to country, it is difficult to estimate the value of illegal trade, but, said CITES, "it is clearly enormous."