Caviar exports banned

Caviar exports by the world’s major producers have been temporarily halted by a United Nations panel.

It hopes to buy time for experts to find ways to reverse dwindling populations of threatened sturgeon – whose eggs provide the culinary delicacy.

Many sturgeon species are suffering “serious population declines”, the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) said yesterday.

Information from sturgeon-exporting countries bordering the Caspian and Black Seas, as well as the lower Danube and Heilongjiang-Amur rivers on the Chinese-Russian border indicates stocks are falling rapidly, CITES said.

Major caviar exporters include Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Iran, which are all on the Caspian Sea, and Bulgaria and Romania, which border the Black Sea along with Russia. China is also a caviar exporter.

The ban covers exports from the major sturgeon-exporting countries, said CITES, which regulates legal caviar exports through an international system of permits.

The Caspian Sea produces the sturgeon said to be the world’s highest quality. The countries bordering the Caspian Sea account for 80% of the global caviar trade.

The UN body said the restrictions on the world caviar trade were temporary to permit exporting nations to show they are not driving the species to extinction and are taking steps to preserve the source of the delicacy.

Countries wishing to export sturgeon products “must demonstrate that their proposed catch and export quotas reflect current population trends and are sustainable”, said Willem Wijnstekers, secretary-general of CITES.

“Governments need to fully implement the measures that they have agreed to ensure that the exploitation of sturgeon stocks is commercially and environmentally sustainable over the long term,” Mr Wijnstekers added.

CITES said it “remains hopeful” that the exporting countries will take the necessary measures, which may allow international trade to resume.

CITES’ 169 member countries have set strict conditions for permitting caviar exports. Countries sharing fishing grounds must agree among themselves on catch and export quotas based on scientific surveys of the stocks.

The Geneva-based UN body imposed a ban on caviar trade from the Caspian Sea for one year starting in 2001, but allowed sales to resume the next year because of rising sturgeon stocks.

In another restriction, CITES imposed annual quotas on caviar exports – some 250,000lb in 2004, down from about 320,000lb in 2003 – but environmentalists say that has not prevented the sturgeon’s decline.

The conservation group WWF welcomed the CITES decision, noting that caviar importers such as the US and European Union need to ensure the legality of the goods they bring in.

More than 25,000lb of illegal caviar was seized in Europe during the last five years, but a much greater amount of smuggled sturgeon eggs was sold on the street and in restaurants, according to WWF and the Britain-based conservation group TRAFFIC.

WWF’s Susan Lieberman said: “Sturgeon have been in dire straits for some time and it has been clear that something drastic had to be done to stop the rampant trade in illegal caviar.”

Since beluga sturgeon take 15 years to reach maturity, they reproduce slowly and their population is more vulnerable to overfishing.