a) CITES Appendices and Checklist of CITES Species
CITES Appendices and Checklist of CITES Species
The CITES Appendices, which contain over 25,000 species, are your primary tool for determining whether a species is protected. Any of the species listed must be accompanied by the required CITES documents before they can enter or leave any country.
You can play an effective role in the application of CITES without necessarily being able to identify all the species. The CITES Appendices contain several entries of large species groups (such as monkeys, parrots, birds of prey, cacti and orchids), which are protected.
As you work with the CITES Appendices, familiarize yourself with the main animal and plant species groups that are protected by CITES.
Click on each of the main animal and plant species groups below for examples of the species that fall within that group.
For more information on animal and plant species groups, visit the CITES Species Photo Gallery
Take a few minutes to have a look at the CITES Appendices, included in the References.
Doing so, you have found that the Appendices:
- includes an Interpretation Section
- includes the annotations for animal and plant species in the lists;
- contain an index which includes the scientific and common names of the groups of animals and plants listed in the three Appendices.
You will also discover that many species are not included by their names, because they are covered by a listing of the whole family (e.g. Psittaciformes spp. means all parrots, or Orchidaceae spp. means all orchids).
Because of that, the database driven Checklist of CITES Species becomes an essential tool for your work. It contains almost all the names of CITES species in alphabetical sequence (Animals and Plants separately).