Kathmandu Workshop Notes

Dear all,

National Input Documents (NIDs) from the tiger range States were
distributed today at the Kathmandu Workshop and all the range States
made presentations on these NIDs this afternoon.

At least three of these NIDs and the presentations this afternoon
covered captive breeding, viz.

China’s National Input Document conatined a 2-page section on captive
breeding, and captive breeding is mentioned elsewhere in the document.
However, there is no new information in this that we didn’t know of
before, and China did not mention captive breeding at all in their oral
presentation.

Lao PDR also noted a captive breeding facility that was approved and
established in Lao PDR before its accession to CITES in 2004.

Vietnam also noted that it only allows captive breeding of tigers for
non-commercial purposes in some pilot areas and is assessing these
operations. The document stressed that no usage of dead tigers or parts
is allowed under their regulations. One of the goals identified by the
Vietnam government was to regulate and monitor these facilities by
establishing a national registration system, requiring all such
facilities to develop plans and strategies whose goal would be to
support conservation of wild tigers and support independent joint
monitoring of these facilities by authorized governmental and
non-governmental organizations.

There will be discussion tomorrow morning on reflecting on the
challenges and actions needed from these presentations that may need to
be included in a high-level declaration and, on Thursday, there will be
separate sub-groups established for each of the range States to discuss
these NIDs, how the national strategies may be refined, what the role of
the international community and GTI would be, and how the process of
implementation is to be managed.

In addition, the UK also today distributed the EU CoP15 paper, with the
amendment to include captive breeding in Res Conf 12.5.

Sorry but that’s all for now – the meeting just started!  Sabri Zain