Howie just sent a great letter, in response to Kedar Gore of the Corbett Foundation.  I wanted to include it here as a summary of the the work we are involved in re: CITES

 

“The ITC existed under that name for a number of years with Judy Mills as the Moderator and had funding for her role.  I don't recall the exact years but I recall 2009 so may a few years after as well.  It does not formally exist now but some of the organizations continue to work together. Most if not all are members of the Species Survival Network which we joined only a few months ago.  A significant part of our role back in the ITC was to create awareness among the international players of the detrimental role the US captive situation has on the conservation of the cats in the wild.  That is now well recognized and we can talk about it if you like.

 

If you have not read Judy's book Blood of the Tiger I highly recommend it.  Over her career Judy worked both on the ground exposing illegal trade and at the high level representing large NGOs and then ITC at CITES etc.  She was privy to private conversations, particularly with representatives of Asian countries, that gives her an insight that third party reporters do not have access to.

 

This year was our first participation in CITES.  We worked with EIA, Judy Mills individually who was one of the people representing us there, Born Free etc in a number of ways.  We helped fund and organize a side event devoted to the tiger.

 

The event was hosted by South African author and journalist Julian Rademeyer, who is known for his work investigating rhino horn trade. Our featured speakers were 1) Bittu Sahgal, a renowned and charismatic Indian tiger/climate change activist and writer, who is the founding editor of Sanctuary Asia, India's premier wildlife and ecology magazine, known for its work enlisting children in wildlife conservation, and 2) Bui Thi Ha, Education for Nature-Vietnam’s ’s vice director and head of the policy and legislation team, who is a feisty young lawyer and goes after the bad guys with great courage, ensuring enforcement agencies prosecute wildlife crime offenders to the full extent of the law.

 

What I am leading up to with this perhaps too long explanation is that after CITES an informal group has formed to continue the work on CITES issues.  It does not have a name like ITC but operates similarly.  We just had our first conference call this past week. The focus was following up on the effort to create standards for rescue centers.

 

You probably know that the major victory at CITES was preserving the 2007 language about tiger farms that the Chinese were hoping to eliminate.  One exciting development was, Laos announced their intention to eliminate their tiger farms. A great step, now they face the difficult task of figuring out how to do that, the big problem of course being what to do with perhaps 700 tigers.  A portion of this group is working on that. In both cases, while there is no formal leader, EIA seem to be taking on the role of organizing the effort.  We feel that that ending the tiger farms and efforts to legitimize sale of parts and derivatives is key to the survival of the tiger in the wild.

 

Carole had a long history with ITC but involvement in CITES and these efforts is new to us.  I think I have characterized this accurately but have copied my two colleagues who have been more involved.

 

Sooo, given all that, if you would like to be part of these group efforts, I would be happy to make an introduction to Debbie Banks at EIA if you do not know her, which is probably the best way to get a better understanding of the efforts and see if you want to get involved?”

 

Howard Baskin

Advisory Board Chairman

Big Cat Rescue

 

Hi, I’m Carole Baskin and I’ve been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole