The 150 nations attending the meeting will also look at the dangers facing dozens of other species, ranging from great white sharks and bottlenose dolphins to tarantulas, happytrees and Malagasy poison frogs. This year's 11-day meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi will be no exception with environmentalists rallying against proposals they believe could destroy vulnerable species. Once again, elephants and whales will attract most attention.
People get very emotional when their survival is seen as being at risk.
Four southern African nations with healthy elephant herds are requesting permission to sell off part of their stocks of ivory tusks to raise money for conservation efforts. Each nation proposing the relaxation of current trade bans insists the move would not harm overall populations and should even help them in the long term if quotas are applied and the sales closely monitored. But conservationists and some other governments say the proposals would either bring massive violations of quota arrangements or stimulate an illegal trade, leading to the species' decimation or outright disappearance. Each side accuses the other of using dubious statistics and science to back its case, and often of winning allies among poor nations support by applying political or economic pressure. It is a myth that everyone involved in these meetings is concerned about conservation and that these are philosophical differences.