Thursday, 4:30–5:30 pm
4 March 2010
School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences
102 Fishery Sciences (auditorium)
1122 NE Boat Street (map)
University of Washington
Reception follows each talk

Michael Rubino BaumPamela Mace

Chief Scientist, Ministry of Fisheries, Wellington, NZ

Defining “endangered” under the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES): Are marine species “special”?

Abstract

CITES began work in 2000 to revise the criteria it uses to list species on its Appendices.  After a long drawn-out series of workshops and meetings, new criteria were adopted in 2004 and came into use for the 2007 CITES Conference of the Parties.  The most important revisions to the criteria were those related to the introduction of the historical extent of decline as a criterion for identifying species at risk of extinction.  For various reasons, commercially-exploited aquatic species were singled out for special consideration.  The main difference between marine and terrestrial species is in the length of their histories of intense exploitation, but are there other fundamental differences?  What are the best criteria to use to determine the influence of international trade in undermining species survival?  Recently, Atlantic bluefin tuna and several shark species have been proposed for listing under CITES.  Is this appropriate?  Are these species at risk of extinction?  This talk explores recent debates on these and other related controversial issues.  

Bio

Pamela Mace is currently the Chief Scientist at the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries. Her key responsibilities are to oversee the Ministry’s research, stock assessment, environmental assessment and biodiversity programs, and to coordinate New Zealand’s science input to several Regional Fisheries Management Organizations and other international fisheries forums. During the last several years, Pamela has been heavily involved in the national and international development of precautionary approaches and harvest control rules for fisheries management (primarily in the US and New Zealand); the development and implementation of national standards for overfishing definitions and rebuilding plans in U.S. and New Zealand fisheries; United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and U.S. initiatives on the management of fishing capacity; investigation of methods for defining and implementing ecosystem approaches to fisheries (EAF); development of criteria for defining species at risk with respect to both the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the U.S. Endangered Species Act; and various science quality assurance projects for reviewing and improving fish stock assessments in the United States, Canada and New Zealand.

Pamela obtained her undergraduate B.Sc. (Hons.) degree from that country at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand in 1976. Her graduate work was undertaken at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada, at what was then the Institute of Animal Resource Ecology. After graduating from UBC in 1983, Pamela went to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Nova Scotia and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on the Bay of Fundy herring purse seine fishery.

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