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Atlantic bluefin tuna is in crisis and meets the criteria for a total ban on international trade, the head of the UN wildlife trade organisation said on Saturday in opening a 13-day meeting.

The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), convening for the first time in the Middle East, is the only UN body with the power to outlaw commerce in endangered wild animals and plants.

Besides the sharply disputed proposal on bluefin, the Convention will debate the status of African elephants, polar bears and tigers.

Delegates from the nearly 150 nations in attendance will also vote on less stringent protection for several types of shark and their lookalikes.

Up to 73 million of the open-water predators are killed every year for their fins, a prestige food eaten mainly in China and Chinese communities around the world.

Boosting the CITES budget -- at less than five million dollars (3.6 million euros) the smallest of the major UN conventions -- is the first item on the agenda.

"In the absence of necessary funding, CITES will not be able to fully exploit its great potential," Secretary General Willem Wijnstekers said in an opening statement.

Until now, the forum was best known for measures restricting commerce in charismatic species, including big cats, great apes and elephants.

But for the first time a marine species -- bluefin tuna -- has taken centre stage.

Despite self-imposed quotas, high-tech fisheries have drained tuna stocks in the Mediterranean and Western Atlantic by as much as 80 percent since 1970.

"The secretariat believes the species (Thunnus thynnus) meets the criteria for Appendix I" of the convention, Wijnstekers said.

This conclusion, he added, "has been confirmed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the scientific committee of the ICCAT," the inter-governmental fishery group that manages tuna stocks in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas.

The European Union and the United States back a move to list the 100,000-dollar-a-head fish on CITES' Appendix I, which bans international trade.

Top consumer Japan is fiercely opposed to the measure, and is sure to mount a vigorous campaign to block the two-thirds vote of those attending the conference needed for the top tier of protection, experts say.

On elephants, a proposal by Tanzania and Zambia would reopen trade in ivory, currently under a nine-year moratorium that started in 2008.

Most other African nations oppose the move, backing a competing measure that would extend the ban by another decade.

Polar bears are also being considered for the top level of protection.

Attended by environmentalists, animal rights advocates, big business and governments, CITES seeks a sustainable balance between protection and commercial exploitation.

Terrestrial flora and fauna have fallen victim to shrinking habitats, hunting and over-harvesting.

Many ocean species have simply been eaten to the brink of viability.

"We have nearly 34,000 species placed under our protection. You need scientific studies, legislation, enforcement, training for customs police, capacity building," said Juan Carlos Vasquez of CITES in pleading for a 16-percent budget boost.

Animals and plants are listed on three levels according to the degree of protection they need.

APPENDIX I covers about 530 animals -- including tigers, great apes, snow leopards and sea turtles -- and more than 300 plants.

The vast majority of species covered are in APPENDIX II, which permits carefully regulated trade.

Pink and red coral, harvested mainly in the Mediterranean for jewellery, is again up for this status after failing to gain it in 2007.

Several hundred APPENDIX III species are protected by national laws.

Separately, the forum will consider a resolution to condemn tiger farming, practised only in China.





AFP