Rosewood, cedar and bigleaf mahogany species will make up a key part of the fortnight-long meeting held at the Hague in the Netherlands between June 3-15, as CITES moves its attention away from exotic specimens to more commercially valuable ones.
According to the organisation, the inclusion of commercial timber species indicates the direction it is likely to take over the coming years as logging and the decline of forest resources becomes a bigger issue.
Documents released ahead of the meeting state that the committee should implement a range of actions, including criminalising the illegal trade of bigleaf mahogany to act as a deterrent, re-establishing the multi-sectoral commission against illegal logging and adjusting the annual export quota for 2007 in countries such as Peru.
