China, United States Cooperate to Protect Asian Snakes

The red-tailed green rat snake (Gonyosoma oxycephalum), found in Southeast Asia, spends its life in trees and tree cavities, seldom descending to the ground.

Washington — The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has added 384 species of snakes found in China and Southeast Asia to its Red List, the most comprehensive information source on the status of plant and animal species worldwide.

The assessment that added the species, released June 19, was supported by China and the United States.

The IUCN assessments are a critical first step in identifying threats to Asian snakes and determining where conservation efforts will be most effective to ensure the long-term survival of the species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) said.

Asian snakes are harvested in large numbers for the international skin trade and are also used as food and for traditional medicines, USFWS said in a news release. Despite this active market in snakes and their products, it said, the Asian snake trade is one of the largest under-regulated segments of wildlife trade globally.

“We are deeply concerned about the impact that trade may have on wild populations of Asian snakes,” said Teiko Saito, USFWS assistant director for international affairs. “We are confident, however, that the strong commitment from both the United States and China to better understand the impact of this trade will help to inform conservation decisions and priorities.”

USFWS funded an IUCN red-listing workshop in Beijing in August 2011 that brought together Asian snake experts from around the world and resulted in the species assessments that were added to the Red List. USFWS provided both technical expertise and funding for this effort.

Of the 384 snake species assessed by IUCN, 103 were categorized as “data deficient,” meaning that there is not enough information available to determine the conservation status of the species. Research on snakes long has been underfunded, and trade data are rarely maintained. Some reports indicate that wild populations are declining in China as a result of habitat destruction and harvest for trade. Still, the threats to wild populations and the implications of the trade are poorly understood.

In addition to the IUCN red-listing workshop, the United States and China jointly proposed a technical workshop to consider the conservation priorities, management and enforcement needs related to the trade of snakes in Asia at the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), held in Doha, Qatar, in March 2010. CITES is an international agreement initiated in 1973 and since then ratified by 175 countries to protect wild animals and plants against overexploitation as a result of international trade.

The workshop proposal, the first joint document submission to CITES from the United States and China, drew international attention to the Asian snake trade. The parties adopted the proposal at COP-15 and held a technical workshop, funded by USFWS and hosted by China, in April 2011.

The workshop’s conservation and trade management recommendations are currently under review and will be considered for adoption by the CITES parties at COP-16 in March 2013.