President Muhammadu Buhari has assented to the ‎Endangered Species Control of International Trade and Traffic Amendment Act 2016, earlier passed by the National Assembly.

Nigeria is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international treaty drawn up in 1973 to protect wildlife against over-exploitation, and to prevent international trade from threatening species with extinction. Endangered species is a species of animal or plant that is seriously at risk of extinction.

Ita Enang, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), made the disclosure on Friday, December 30, 2016 in Abuja. He said that ‎the Act was one of the 10 bills forwarded by the National Assembly to the President, adding that, with the approval, the President had completed work on all the bills sent to him for his consent.

Enang said: “The President has assented to the bill sent by the National Assembly, The Endangered Species (Control of International Trade and Traffic) Amendment Act 2016.

“This is one of the 10 bills that were forwarded by the National Assembly to Mr President and he has just assented to this, almost completing every action on all the bills that were forwarded to him by the National Assembly.

“The intent of this amendment is to bring the penalty provisions in line with economic realities and to act as a deterrent or deter people from trafficking and trading in endangered species because endangered are preserved of the country.”

The Presidential aide said the intent of the amendment was to bring the penalty provisions in line with economic realities and to serve as a deterrent to people trafficking in endangered species “because endangered species are the preserves of the country”.

According to him, the Act is to discourage trafficking in endangered species and will encourage the culture of the preservation of endangered species. He added that, with the assent, the President had increased the penalties for violations of the provisions in line with today’s realities.

With the signing of the Act, President Buhari had so far signed 17 bills into law in 2016. The President in November signed eight bills into law which included the Prevention of Crime Amendment Act‎ 2016, the National Crop Varieties and Livestock Breeds (Registration) Amendment Act‎ 2016, Telecommunications and Postal Offences Amendment Act‎ 2016, the National Agricultural Land Development Authority Amendment Act‎ 2016.

Others are the Produce Enforcement of Export Standards Amendment Act‎ 2016, the Agricultural and Rural Management ‎Training Institute Amendment Act‎ 2016, Bee Import Control and Management Amendment Act‎ 2016, and Water Resources Amendment Act‎ 2016‎. ‎

The President also signed another eight bills into law, on Dec. 20. The affected bills included National Judicial Institute Amendment Act, 2016 and Advertising Practitioners Registration Amendment Act, 2016‎. Others are ‎Utilities Charges Commission Amendment Act, 2016, ‎Quality Surveyors Registration Amendment Act, 2016 and ‎Small and Medium Scale Industries Development Agency Amendment Act, 2016. Others are ‎Treaty to Establish African Economic Community Relating to Pan African Parliament (Accession and Jurisdiction) Amendment Act, 2016, University of Abuja Amendment Act, 2016 and ‎Chartered Institute of Stock Brokers Amendment Act, 2016.‎

Commenting on the signed bills, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, who had earlier met with the President behind closed door, assured that more progressive bills would be passed by the National Assembly in the coming years.

“It shows in part, what we have been able to do in the National Assembly and there are many more bills to come and the President is also responding to them.

“You are going to see more of that in 2017, there are a lot of bills lined up.

“For us in the Senate for example, in the last session just this last three months we did much more than what we did in the entire year.

“The National Assembly is settling down and as such you will see much more bill passed for the President to sign.”

Saraki, who joined President Buhari to perform the weekly 2-Raka’at Juma’at prayer at the Villa Mosque, described the fall of Sambisa forest as a great feat.

“This is a great progress from where we are before. If you look at where we were a year and half ago, the challenges we had in that area for us to recapture the place‎, I think is a great feat.

“It shows what we can do as a country when we have the commitment, purpose and the leadership required to do that.

“As we have done that in the North East, I believe the other issue before us is the fight against corruption, the economy, providing jobs, peace in the Niger Delta,” he said.

A rainbow-headed snake and a dragon-like lizard are among 163 new species that scientists recently discovered in the Greater Mekong region in South East Asia, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) disclosed recently.

According to the conservation group, rapid development in the area, from dams to mines, is threatening wildlife survival.

The discoveries, published in a recent report, include a gecko in Laos with pale blue skin and a rare banana species discovered in northern Thailand that is critically endangered because of increasing deforestation.

The Greater Mekong, which covers Cambodia, Laos, Burma (also known as Myanmar), Thailand and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, is home to some of the world’s most endangered species, according to scientists, who say that rare or endangered animal parts, including tiger bones and rhino horns, are seen as collector’s items by some and are often used in traditional medicine.

In June, Thai wildlife authorities raided the Tiger Temple west of Bangkok, a popular tourist attraction. There they discovered scores of dead tiger cubs, frozen tiger carcasses, skins and dead cubs in jars, as well as other protected species.

It remains unclear why the Tiger Temple was storing dead tiger cubs and parts, although officials have said they might have been used for traditional Chinese medicine.

Jimmy Borah, Wildlife Programme Manager for WWF-Greater Mekong, said the new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region were a reminder that there is hope at a time when extinction rates are increasing at an alarming rate.

“The Greater Mekong region keeps reminding us that there are many incredible, unexplored areas, leading to new discoveries happening every year and it is crucial that we protect them before they are lost,” Borah told Reuters.

A 2016 report by WWF found that by 2020 global populations of fish, birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles could have declined by two-thirds in just 50 years.

The Greater Mekong is a global hub for illegal wildlife trade.

“Many collectors are willing to pay thousands of dollars or more for the rarest, most unique and most endangered species, often buying them at the region’s illegal wildlife markets,” said Borah.

“To save them, it’s crucial that we improve enforcement against poaching and close illegal wildlife markets.”

Cheetahs may have once prospered, but they certainly aren’t anymore.

Scientists examining the worldwide population of these swift, spotted cats have found that there are only 7,100 left in the wild, surviving on just 9% of their original land range – and that they should be upgraded from “vulnerable” (population decreasing) to “endangered” (seriously at risk of extinction) on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Red List).

The grim findings, published in PNAS, show that studying cheetahs in protected areas may make the species’ status look rosier than reality – and that conservationists may need to switch tactics if they want to prevent cheetahs and other threatened species from going extinct.

As humans have spread across every continent on Earth, it has often bode ill for nearby populations of large mammals. Tens of thousands of years ago, mammoths, saber-toothed cats and giant ground sloths roamed California – but these and other charismatic megafauna dwindled and went extinct around the same time that humans arrived on the scene. (Scientists are still studying whether humans, climate change or both helped lead to these species’ extinction.)

“The spread and dominance of humans across the world during the Anthropocene have precipitated a sixth global biodiversity extinction crisis,” the study authors wrote.

The Anthropocene is the term used for the Earth’s current geological age – the chapter of its history in which human activity has profoundly affected the environment and global climate. One place where that effect is highly noticeable is in today’s extinction rate: The industrialisation and spread of human civilisation in recent times has accelerated the decline of much of the world’s iconic wildlife, be they giraffes, rhinoceroses, elephants or lions, among many others.

Large land-based mammals, the authors wrote, “can be especially vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, human-wildlife conflict, illegal wildlife trade, and overharvesting for bushmeat or traditional use.”

Cheetahs, as it turns out, are no exception to that trend of decline. Known formally as Acinonyx jubatus, cheetahs today survive on only 9% of their past distributional range, according to the study authors. That’s a big deal for large carnivores – particularly for cheetahs that need a lot of space. Their home ranges can exceed 3,000 square kilometers.

As they have for other species, scientists, government officials and conservationists have worked to create protected areas to shelter these shrinking populations against poaching and deadly confrontations with farmers and other humans, among other risks.

But population estimates based on protected areas don’t tell the whole story, since wild animals don’t stay within these human-defined boundaries, the authors pointed out. And those inaccuracies are especially problematic for large mammals, because while cheetah populations might look OK within those well-patrolled areas, the dangers immediately increase for any populations living outside of those zones.

“Wildlife management authorities may be required to monitor wildlife within PAs (protected areas) but not outside them, and monitoring is usually more challenging outside PAs, because wildlife are more elusive and occur there at lower densities,” the study authors wrote. “This deficit leads to a lack of information on populations outside PAs, where they are generally more threatened, resulting in an overly favourable assessment of status.”

So for this paper, Sarah Durant of the Zoological Society of London and her international team of colleagues put together a comprehensive data set of cheetahs’ distribution and status, hoping to get a clearer picture about how cheetahs were really doing.

The findings were sobering. There appear to be only about 7,100 adult and adolescent cheetahs left in the wild, restricted to less than a tenth of their original range. On top of that, a full 77% of their current range actually falls outside of protected areas, which means the vast majority of the cheetahs’ range exposes them to a host of threats, from hunting or trafficking by humans to conflict and competition with humans.

“Establishing and maintaining protected areas (PAs) are key tools for biodiversity conservation,” the study authors pointed out. “However, this approach is insufficient for many species, particularly those that are wide-ranging and sparse.”

The scientists recommended that cheetahs be raised from “vulnerable” to “endangered” on the IUCN Red List.

In the meantime, conservationists, scientists and policymakers may have to shift their focus toward making those unprotected areas safer places for cheetahs to survive, rather than focusing all their efforts on the protected zones.

“For this shift to occur, new policy, management, and financial tools are needed that promote coexistence between people and wildlife outside and adjacent to PAs,” the authors wrote. “This innovation will require concerted action from governments and effective cross-sectoral engagement across the conservation and economic development communities.”

Doing so could provide a model for dealing with other threatened species – although getting there will present a new and complicated set of challenges, the scientists said.

“Securing sustainable solutions for wildlife and people will not be easy, particularly where threatened species may share their range with marginalised and vulnerable communities and where human development challenges are substantial,” the authors wrote. “However, unless this transformation is achieved, the future of wide-ranging and highly threatened species, such as cheetah, is in doubt.”

By Amina Khan (The Los Angeles Times)