RESULTS - Historical data from CITES regarding the export of leopard trophies
Importation of trophies by countries
The World Conservation Monitoring Centre website includes information regarding how many leopard trophies have been imported into countries that are party to the CITES convention. These records indicate that the United States of America imports the largest number of leopard trophies by a factor of 4. This is interesting as in 1972, as a result of the increasing concern over the sale of leopard skins worldwide, the United States of America listed the leopard as an endangered species (as reported by Bailey,1993). By 1975, the species had been put on Appendix 1 of CITES , effectively banning any trade in the products of the species. During the next five years the US Fish and Wildlife Service was persuaded by arguments from a number of African range states that the leopard was not under any threat in much of the Sub Saharan region, and that utilization of the leopard in this region would not threaten the survival of the species as a whole. As a result in 1980, the USA revised the status of the leopard to that of "threatened" rather than endangered (Bailey, 1993), allowing for the importation of leopard trophies from countries with approved CITES quotas.
With the agreement from the Parties to CITES in 1983 that
a number of range states in the Sub Saharan region could export leopard trophies
as per a quota agreed by the Parties, the USA is now the largest importer
of trophies in the world (Table 2)
|
Importing country
|
Average number of trophies imported per year
|
|
United States of America
|
430
|
|
France
|
98
|
|
Spain
|
70
|
|
Germany
|
58
|
|
South Africa
|
57
|
|
Mexico
|
25
|
|
Austria
|
22
|
|
Italy
|
19
|
|
Canada
|
10
|
|
United Kingdom
|
10
|
Table 2: Average number of imports of leopard trophies of the top 10 countries that are Parties to the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) from 1992 to 2007 (Source: World Conservation Monitoring Centre)
