The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) will no longer be content applying its considerable influence to areas of international trade in threatened or endangered natural resources of little economic importance. Having blooded its regulatory spears on commercial fisheries and timber issues at the 12th Conference of Parties (COP 12) in Santiago, Chile this past November, the agenda of future meetings will target truly commercially valuable species. That’s the message being sent by CITES officials and NGOs as reported by Nature magazine in an article entitled “CITES Comes of Age.” It’s a message all resource-reliant industries should heed.

The timber industry is high on the NGO hit list. The listing of big leaf mahogany on CITES Appendix II was the turning point. After ten years wrangling to place the valuable hardwood species on the restricted trade list, the Santiago meetings saw the timber industry’s defenses collapse. CITES officials and NGOs alike foresee the international venue tackling a range of tropical timbers including teak.

Fisheries interests wrongly believe that they dodged the CITES’ regulatory bullet with the defeat of the effort to list Patagonian toothfish (Chilean sea bass). The truth is that advocates of CITES see an entirely new level of confidence that the organization can indeed take on and dominate major commercial industries thanks to the win on mahogany.

It is unfortunate but true that resource-based industries don’t recognize either the importance of CITES or the strength of the advocacy groups aligned against them. CITES is not an event that needs to be addressed once every two years. NGOs and their allied national delegates began preparing for the next COP before they left Santiago. Seafood, pharmaceuticals, timber, agriculture, mining, and energy are all industries that will see CITES activities having very direct influence on how they do future business.