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one of its three appendices. The action that triggers application of CITES ‘trade’
measures is the movement of a specimen between States or, more precisely, across a
State border, realised or intended by men. The commercial dimension is not relevant,
even if it may prove decisive for legal regime of the transaction.8 The word ‘species’
means “any species, subspecies, or geographically separate population thereof ”;9 it is,
however, the word ‘specimen’ that is crucial from the point of view of trade control
measures: it includes animals and plants, whether alive or dead, and their readily
recognizable parts or derivatives thereof;10 it also means products made of CITES-
listed animals or plants or containing their parts.
The part of the title that most conceals the real scope of the convention is the
expression ‘endangered species’. This expression is not defined in the text, but it is
generally understood as referring to species that are threatened with extinction due to
their unfavourable conservation status. A number of species threatened by extinction
are indeed covered by the convention – they are included in its Appendix I ; they
represent, however, only a small portion of CITES-listed species.11 The trade in these
species is subject “to particularly strict regulation in order not to endanger further their
survival and must only be authorised in exceptional circumstances”.12 These exceptional
circumstances are not specified; the convention only requires the specimen not to be
used “for primarily commercial purposes” after its importation.13 The question whether
the intended use satisfies this requirement must be answered in each particular case
by the management authority of the State of import.14 The purpose of the strict rules
8 See below.
9 CITES, art. I (a).
10 Ibid. art. I (b). Resolution Conf. 9.6 (Rev. CoP16) specifies that “the term ‘readily recognizable part or
derivative’ … shall be interpreted to include any specimen which appears from an accompanying document,
the packaging or a mark or label, or from any other circumstances, to be a part or derivative of an animal or
plant of a species included in the Appendices, unless such part or derivative is specifically exempted from the
provisions of the Convention”.
11 As of October 2013, the number of species listed in Appendix I was 931 (plus 47 subspecies) out of
the total of more than 35 000 CITES-listed species. See CITES. The CITES species [online]. 2013.
Available at: [ accessed 20-06-2014].
12 CITES, art. II para. 1.
13 Ibid., art. III para. 3 (c). It must be stressed that this requirement concerns only the use of the specimen
from the time of importation onwards; the transaction between exporter and importer itself may
very well be of a commercial nature. See WIJNSTEKERS, W. The evolution of CITES. 9 th edition.
International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation, 2011, p. 128.
14 This task may turn out to be quite difficult in practice. The extreme possibilities – use only for
commercial purposes or use that lacks any commercial aspect – are easy to deal with, but do not
appear very often. In most cases, the intended use combines both commercial and non-commercial
aspects. The convention does not provide any guidance as far as the terms ‘commercial purposes’ or
‘primarily’ are concerned, but the general principles, accompanied by several examples, are provided for
in Resolution Conf. 5.10 (Rev. CoP15), entitled Definition of primarily commercial purposes. Without
mentioning it expressly, the resolution applies the precautionary principle by requiring States to define
expression ‘commercial purposes’ “as broadly as possible so that any transaction which is not wholly ‘non-
commercial’ will be regarded as ‘commercial’” and by stating that “all uses whose non-commercial aspects
do not clearly predominate shall be considered to be primarily commercial in nature, with the result that the