Marine Turtle Newsletter 67:2, © 1994
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Marine Turtle Newsletter 67:2, © 1994
After years of strenuous lobbying on the part of conservation organizations throughout the world, and after the U. S. formally censured Japan in 1991 under the authority of the Pelly Amendment to the Fisherman's Protection Act of 1967, Japan has kept its promise to remove its reservation on the highly endangered hawksbill turtle, included in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). This quiet action, heralded by a simple announcement on the part of the CITES Secretariat ("The Depositary Government [Switzerland] informed the Secretariat on 19 July 1994 of the withdrawal by Japan, effective 29 July 1994, of its specific reservation with regard to Eretmochelys imbricata included in Appendix I"), signifies the end of an era. Japan was long the world's largest importer of stuffed hawksbills and raw hawksbill shell (tortoiseshell, or bekko), a trade which has been implicated in the deaths of more than one million hawksbills. Now that Japan has removed the last of its reservations on sea turtle species, the importation of all sea turtle parts and products into that country is illegal. Sea turtle conservationists around the world celebrate this victory and applaud the Government of Japan for this long-awaited announcement. Of 122 signatory nations, a mere three now have the dubious distinction of maintaining CITES reservations on sea turtles (Cuba: Eretmochelys imbricata, Chelonia mydas; St. Vincent and the Grenadines: Eretmochelys imbricata; and Suriname: Chelonia mydas, Dermochelys coriacea). KLE/SAE.