| IUCN confirm that the Solomon Islands ban must remain
 The scientific arm of the international trade body that regulates trade in dolphins has denounced plans by the government of the Solomon Islands to allow export of live dolphins to other countries. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in a letter to the Solomons government, insists that any export of wild dolphins would violate CITES because studies on the status of local dolphin populations have never been done.
Click here to read the IUCN letter
Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare asked earlier this week about scientific reasons for protecting the wild dolphins in their natural habitat. The expert marine mammalogists of the IUCN have now made these scientific concerns clear to his government.
The owner of the dolphin captive facility, Christopher Porter, claimed to have “direct communications with” the IUCN and CITES, but, tellingly, did not reveal the opposition of those bodies, for scientific reasons, to his proposed captures and exports of wild dolphins.
The IUCN is the world’s premier scientific expert on wildlife, including marine mammals. CITES takes the recommendations of the IUCN as their basic scientific data on the status of endangered wildlife. As of 24 June 2007, the Solomon Islands became a member nation of CITES.
The Marine Connection welcomes IUCN's intervention and will continue to support the call to have this ban upheld.
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