• Ahead of the recent CITES summit to hash out wildlife trade regulations, South Africa was expected to table a proposal that would have tightened the legal trade in South African abalone, a shellfish in high demand in East Asia.
• The proposal was aimed at protecting an endangered species that’s been severely depleted by a massive illegal trade driven largely by organized crime.
• However, the South African delegation withdrew the proposal at the last minute, amid ongoing tensions in the country between conservationists, abalone farmers and coastal communities dependent on income from the illegal trade.
• A recent report by wildlife trade NGO TRAFFIC calls for coordinated international action to curb the illegal trade, including a CITES listing.

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Amid negotiations last week on wildlife trade regulations by delegates from around the world, one item was left out of the discussions. South Africa had been expected to bring to the summit of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, a proposal to strengthen protection of South African abalone, a large sea snail considered a delicacy in East Asia. But it abruptly withdrew its proposal at the summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

South African abalone (Haliotis midae) commands high prices in East Asian markets and has been massively overfished in recent decades. The trade in the mollusk is dominated by organized transnational criminal networks and local gangs, but the fishery also provides livelihoods for thousands of people in coastal communities across South Africa’s Eastern and Western Cape provinces.

Under South Africa’s proposal, the species would have been listed on CITES Appendix II, which would have subjected the international commercial trade of abalone to strict import and export regulations. While similar proposals for other species have been withdrawn at past CITES summits, the countries behind them usually offered a public explanation for their move to the other delegates. This time, however, South Africa made no public statement about its U-turn.

Thobile Zulu-Molobi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, told Mongabay that reasons for the withdrawal would be given once there’s “more clarity on certain issues.”

Abalone land other exotic seafood for sale in Hong Kong. Image by Jason Wong via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Johan Heckroodt, chair of the Abalone Farmers Association of South Africa (AFASA), suggested the last-minute change of course was related to the recent replacement of the country’s environment minister. On Nov. 12, Dion George was replaced by Willie Aucamp, who some domestic environmental groups say has close ties to hunting and other groups that favor relaxing rules for consumptive use of wildlife.

Heckroodt said his association welcomed the withdrawal of the proposal, which they had spent the past month lobbying against, citing fears that a CITES listing would harm the market for legally produced abalone. The legal fishery consists largely of aquaculture operations employing many people in coastal communities.

“When [buyers] see that this is a CITES-listed product, they’re not going to be interested in being educated about what is legal and what is illegal. They just not going to buy it,” Heckroodt said.

Markus Bürgener senior program officer with global wildlife trade monitor TRAFFIC, told Mongabay that South Africa has missed an opportunity to rally support from other countries to explore options within the CITES system that he says is the only way to protect the threatened species, legal businesses and the communities that depend on abalone.

“We don’t have any other mechanism that would provide the legal framework for transit and importing countries to assist South Africa in addressing the international illegal trade,” he said.

Analysis released by TRAFFIC ahead of the CITES summit estimated that about 67% of abalone exported from South Africa since 2000 was illegally harvested. As estimated 4,000 metric tons of the shellfish were poached in 2024, TRAFFIC added.

Abalone for sale at a restaurant in South Africa in 2008. Image by Vilseskogen via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

According to Bürgener, over the past 20 years, increasing quantities of abalone have been exported from neighboring countries such as Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique — none of which has a domestic abalone fisheries or the legal framework to monitor the trade.

In recent decades, fishers living along South Africa’s coastline have lost legal access to fisheries for many species that they’ve historically depended on for their livelihoods. Government quotas have allocated them steadily smaller allowable catches of species like crayfish and traditional line fish like geelbek (Atractoscion aequidens). At the same time, local gangs have built lucrative connections for illegal trade of abalone with transnational syndicates. For many coastal fishers, poaching abalone has become more lucrative than pursuing ever-shrinking legal quotas.

South Africa’s legal abalone industry has been severely impacted by the soaring illegal trade. The species is now classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Poaching of wild abalone has collapsed the population to decline to just 2% of its pristine biomass levels, which prompted George, the previous environment minister, to move to list dried abalone with CITES.

South Africa’s government had proposed to list only dried abalone — the form in which it’s most commonly traded illegally — on Appendix II, to protect legal producers, who primarily export fresh and frozen abalone.

“Poaching syndicates thrive on the illegal international trade in dried abalone, and this listing will close critical loopholes in global enforcement,” George said in an October statement.

Bürgener told Mongabay that the proposal didn’t comply with CITES Appendix II criteria, which require species to be listed in all forms. TRAFFIC said South Africa should explore relisting dried abalone on Appendix III, an action it’s entitled to take unilaterally and that can include only one part or form of an animal. South Africa previously did this in 2007, a move that then required export permits for trade in abalone from South Africa, as well as certificates of origin for abalone traded from other countries.

In its report, TRAFFIC stressed that any CITES listing would complement internal steps to tackle the illegal trade, like the effective enforcement of South Africa’s newly adopted regulations requiring full traceability for every dried abalone consignment leaving the country.

Bürgener also said that tighter control of the illegal trade must avoid creating administrative barriers for the legal abalone sector.

“The real solution is serious alternative sources of income, livelihoods, jobs; that really needs to happen at the same time as stopping abalone poaching,” Bürgener said. He added that South Africa’s withdrawn proposal opens the door for the environment ministry to study the practical and economic implications for the legal abalone sector should the species be listed.

Banner image: Fish workers unpack parcels of abalone freshly arrived from Cape Town Airport at the Aberdeen wholesale fish market in Hong Kong. Image courtesy of AP Photo/Louise Delmotte.

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