Global conservation plan fails to protect sharks: group

(A worker unloads sharks from wooden boats in a fish port in Banyuwangi in Indonesia's East Java province in this June 27, 2008 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Sigit Pamungkas/Files) |

(Reuters) - A 10-year-old international plan to conserve sharks has largely failed and only 13 of the top 20 shark-catching countries have developed national plans to protect the endangered creatures, a report showed Thursday.
Shark populations have been falling worldwide mostly due to overfishing to satisfy demand for shark fin soup in east Asia.
In 2001, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) approved an international plan aimed at conserving sharks after it found that a serious monitoring and control program was lacking for international shark trade.
In its report, wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic and the Pew Environment Group urged an FAO fisheries committee meeting next week to review steps urgently to manage shark fisheries.
"With 30 percent of shark species now threatened or near threatened with extinction, there is little evidence that the plan has contributed significantly to improved conservation and management of these animals," Traffic said in a statement.
Twenty countries account for nearly 80 percent of the total number of sharks caught globally. An estimated 73 million sharks are killed annually mostly for their fins, U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund said last year.
Indonesia alone catches 13 percent of the world's sharks, according to the report, entitled "The Future of Sharks: a Review of Action and Inaction", which was released Thursday.
Other big catchers include India, Spain, Taiwan, Argentina, Mexico, Pakistan, the United States, Japan and Malaysia.
Only 13 of the top 20 catchers have developed action plans to protect sharks and it is unclear how they have been implemented or if they have been effective, the report said.
"The fate of the world's sharks is in the hands of the Top 20 shark catchers, most of which have failed to demonstrate what, if anything, they are doing to save these imperiled species," said Glenn Sant, Traffic's global marine program leader.
(Editing by Maria Golovnina) (www.reuters.com)