Notifications

No. 1999/48 Geneva, 1 July 1999

CONCERNING:

Mortality of live animals in trade

1. Through Notification to the Parties No. 848 of 18 April 1995, the Secretariat requested the Parties to provide data on mortality of live specimens during transport.

2. Reference was made to paragraph j) of Resolution Conf. 9.23 (now replaced by Resolution Conf. 10.21), which recommended that "Parties maintain records of the number of live specimens per shipment and the mortalities in transport of species listed in the appendices, particularly birds, and note obvious causes of mortality, and that they publish these data annually, providing a copy to the Chairman of the Animals Committee".

3. Only a few Parties responded to this Notification. The Secretariat is grateful to those Parties that provided information. However, the limited number of responses did not permit a meaningful evaluation of the information received.

4. The Transport Working Group of the Animals Committee met in Washington, D.C., United States of America, on 15 January 1998, to reconsider this issue. It concluded that mortality during transport is an important issue that needs to be investigated and monitored continuously. Because there had been so few responses from Parties to the previous Notification, it decided to concentrate on a limited number of species.

5. At the above-mentioned meeting, the following species were selected, using the number of animals traded annually as the main selection criterion.

	Mammals	Chlorocebus aethiops
		Macaca fascicularis
		Saimiri sciureus
	Birds	Amazona amazonica
		Eos borneo
		Psittacus erithacus
		Trochilidae spp.
	Reptiles	Chamaeleo senegalensis
		Python sebae
		Testudo horsfieldii
	Amphibians	Dendrobates pumilio
		Mantella aurantiaca

6. Annexed to this Notification is an abbreviated reporting form.

7. The Secretariat would be grateful if the Parties would distribute this form in sufficient copies to all agencies involved in inspecting shipments of live specimens, at the time of export/import, and to companies trading in live specimens, and request them to complete the form for each inspected shipment.

8. The Secretariat would be grateful if these forms could be returned on a monthly basis.

9. This Notification replaces Notification to the Parties No. 848 of 18 April 1995.