By Richard Black

Environment correspondent, BBC News website, The Hague



The eyes have it...

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The slow loris, native to large swathes of Asia, must be one of the most appealing creatures on the planet.

"The pet shops advertise them, and they're very popular to Japanese ladies," says Masayuki Sakamoto from the Japan Wildlife Conservation Society.

"They're easy to keep, they don't cry, they're small, and just very cute."

In Japan, a slow loris will cost you between $1,500 and $4,500; but that conceals the real cost of the pet trade, measured in ripped fingers, bloody mouths, and babies unable to clean up their own defecation.

"They'll pull out its teeth so the vendor can say it's a baby," recounts Anna Nekaris, a loris specialist based at Oxford Brookes University in the UK.

"They're kept in wire cages; and because of the special network of blood vessels they have, when they're pulled out of the cages it cuts their hands and feet."

Domestic trade is prevented under law in all the range states, yet it's widespread and carried out in an open manner which points to a need for better domestic enforcement

Chris Shepherd, Traffic

The Cambodian government has just pushed through a ban on the international trade in the slow loris; in technical terms, uplisting these primates from Appendix 2 to Appendix 1 within the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The bid sailed through the CITES meeting by consensus. But not all conservation groups backed it, the implication being that sentiment may be obstructing rational analysis of the problem.

The big unknown

It used to be assumed that the slow loris was a single species, its range stretching from northern India down through Burma, Thailand, and peninsular Malaysia, across into Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and into the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines.

Campaigners say hands and feet are damaged in cages

The scale of the threat is also unclear. Population estimates are often based on small surveys, and the official Red List of Threatened Species notes a lack of data from many areas, although a more recent specialist workshop categorised all five species as either Endangered or Vulnerable to extinction.

Nobody knows the scale of the international loris trade either. Between 1998 and 2006, Japanese authorities seized 363 animals, while Thai, Indonesian and Singaporean officials uncovered 358 specimens bound for Japan.

Wildlife trade experts work on the basis that about 10% of shipments are found, but that might be an underestimate in the case of the slow loris, whose survival instinct is to curl up and do nothing, making them easy to hide in a suitcase.

CITES EXPLAINED Threatened organisms listed on three appendices depending on level of risk Appendix 1 - all international trade banned Appendix 2 - international trade monitored and regulated Appendix 3 - trade bans by individual governments, others asked to assist "Uplisting" - moving organism to a more protective appendix, "downlisting" - the reverse Conferences of the Parties (COPs) held every three years CITES administered by UN Environment Programme (Unep)

"The species are in international trade, but current information indicates that the extent of that trade is relatively limited and its impact likely to be insignificant compared with other factors," notes the expert assessment from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) prepared for the CITES meeting.

IUCN suggests that habitat loss may be a more important factor in their decline.

But this sober assessment did not find favour with CITES delegates. The brief debate acknowledged the reality of ongoing forest destruction in south-east Asia, but nobody spoke against Cambodia's resolution.

Perhaps the loris' emotional appeal won the day.

Painful birth

In southeast Asia, cuteness is not all the slow loris has to offer.

A traditional Cambodian medicine to alleviate childbirth pain is loris wine, each bottle made from the bodies of three animals mixed with rice wine.

Carcasses are dried and smoked for use in other traditional remedies. There is trade here, often from rural areas into cities, but it rarely crosses international borders.

The babies are unable to clean their own bodies

"Domestic trade is prevented under law in all the range states, yet it's widespread and carried out in an open manner which points to a need for better domestic enforcement."

The irony is that the CITES proposal was supported by many of the governments which Chris Shepherd fingers as lacking the will to enforce domestic laws.

Anna Nekaris, though, believes uplisting will increase awareness of the loris' plight among the public, and within enforcement agencies.

"At the moment they're seen as just a little brown animal, and most CITES officials probably wouldn't distinguish it from a lemur," she says.

"An Appendix 1 listing would bring more education for these officers, and would help them realise that this is something they should be looking out for."

The Cambodian bid was backed by animal welfare groups. Pictures of these cutest of creatures apparently shivering in terror in market cages have tremendous emotional appeal.

But CITES is supposed to work on sound science, not emotion.

The Appendix 1 listing will not do any harm - it can hardly make prospects for the loris worse.

Without increased domestic action, it may not do much good either.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk