Migratory species that travel long distances in the ocean, including sharks, turtles and dolphins, face an unprecedented number of threats resulting from human actions. At the latest assembly of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), representatives of governments made a series of decisions aimed at protecting migratory marine species, as well as their terrestrial, avian and freshwater counterparts. However, experts say more action needs to be urgently taken to stop their slide toward extinction. The CMS treaty was created more than 40 years ago to conserve migratory species and their habitats on a global scale. Since then, representatives from the treaty’s 133 member states have met regularly to discuss actions to protect the species on Earth that regularly traverse national and international boundaries. The 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP14) took place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Feb. 12-17. During the assembly, parties agreed upon a number of measures to protect migratory species threatened with extinction. They added several new species to the convention’s appendices and made decisions to address the present and future threats to these species, such as the impacts of climate change and the prospect of deep-sea mining. At the outset of the meeting, the CMS released a landmark report that found that populations of almost half of the nearly 1,200 species listed in the convention are declining, and that one in five are threatened with extinction. Research shows that fish are faring the worst, with nearly every fish species…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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