Also proposed is a ban on the importation of exotic animals such as giraffes and hippopotamuses, such as those "already agreed" between two zoos in Ecuador and the guardians of the animals brought by Pablo Escobar that escaped to the Magdalena River in Colombia, the reasons for not importing in this link.

But let's go back to the 14th session of the Biodiversity Commission of the Assembly. In which there was no time for boredom and many surprises. The first one was that the Pachakutik assembly member Gissella Molina, designated as rapporteur of this project, tried in every possible way to have it shelved. The arguments were unbelievable: that "they are last minute reforms", that "this project is being pushed through between the hours of the night", that "it is not comprehensive, that it deals with two legal bodies", that "it needs to be well analyzed"... In other words, she was unaware of the previous report and all the work behind it. If she had any doubts, a few hours on the Facebook account watching the videos of the Commission would bring her up to date with the interventions.

Carlos Merizalde, representative of Imbabura, patiently and skillfully settled the issue: "we do not and will not support illegal mining because it violates human rights". Molina retreated, but momentarily.

 

Representatives of the artisanal fishermen of Galapagos were also heard in this parenthesis. Dionisio Zapata spoke, the equivalent of Rohon in the null evolution of his speeches, which can be summarized as: bad environmentalists, good fishermen. Since 1998, like his industrial fishing colleague, he has been accusing conservationists of the backwardness of his sector: "We fishermen are the ones who really take care of Galapagos, we have lobster and cucumber bans... the last cucumber fishery was a success. He added with conviction: "the press and the paid journalist bring out the effects that are not real".

Zapata on sea cucumbers omitted to say that, in general terms, the holothurians have not recovered. For example, in 2001 they fished 3.5 million cucumbers and this time there were 600,000 and after waiting five years for the cucumber populations to recover somewhat (in this link some data).

But the fishermen were there because of the ban on the use of longline and its variants in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. This prohibition was in the second paragraph of the aforementioned fourth transitional provision and sought to ban this fishing gear that is characterized by being unselective and having a high percentage of bycatch such as sharks, turtles and seabirds, species that are not supposed to be the target of fishing.

After the Galapagos artisanal fishermen, Cristina Cely, a veterinarian like Molina, spoke, but she is a long-time animal activist and one of the promoters of the moratorium on the commercialization of sharks and their fins. Cely spoke as if she were at home, I have seen at least five interventions in the same Biodiversity Commission and the Plenary of the Assembly providing data on shark fishing, the Chinese fishing fleet, demanding answers on the smuggling of shark fins and denouncing the longline fleet that turns off its identification and location systems near Galapagos.

With firm and technical arguments Cely explained the reasons for the moratorium on shark commercialization. "Environmentalists work so that fishermen are not left without fishing, I am not against an activity on which thousands of families depend on the coast. Sharks play a fundamental role in the sea by maintaining healthy fish populations that artisanal fishermen catch", were some of the phrases she dedicated to the fishing sector with the skill of a surgeon expert in dealing with the apparent lack of reasons.

 

 

After listening to the guests, the session was reinstated. The Assemblyman for Galapagos, Pedro Zapata, explained the reasons why the Commission cannot request the project to be filed, once again telling Molina that it should be in the plenary. Zapata suggested voting article by article. By then it was already three hours of meeting and the debate began, to call it that way; but before that he said he was not opposed to the moratorium as he had seen in a tweet of an "Animal Log", referring to the portal Bitácora Ambiental.

 

Giraffes in their natural environment in the Kruguer National Park in South Africa. Photo Franklin Vega

 

I was anxiously awaiting article 11 that establishes the prohibition of importing exotic animals, such as the four giraffes that died in the Loja Zoo a few weeks ago. But to my surprise it was not Assemblywoman Molina who proposed the elimination of this prohibition. It was Assemblywoman Viviana Veloz of the UNES party who made the request. Luckily for the animals, her colleagues did not join the request, which, if approved, would leave the way clear for the arrival of Pablo Escobar's hippopotamuses, which two zoos in Ecuador already have their eye on.

 

In this way, the rest of the articles were analyzed; in total there were 27 in which observations and novelties were registered. And after five hours and 45 minutes they arrived at the transitory provisions. When they reached the fourth - the moratorium on sharks, their fins and longlining in Galapagos - a slight uproar began and the first vote sanctified the elimination of the ban on longlining and its variants in Galapagos. The first step in the victory of the animal rights movement and the ban on the commercialization of sharks seemed to have materialized.

Just before starting the celebrations for the sharks that will be saved and how Ecuador will stop being the third world exporter of shark fins - at least for a year or until this bloody business is controlled - the secretary of the Commission read the proposal of Assemblyman Rohon, who had presented it in the plenary a week before the debate in the Commission. The document of the Assemblyman for Guayas, and fishing industrialist, asked for the elimination of the entire fourth transitory provision, that is to say, the moratorium and the longline issue.

 

Nothing hidden under the sun, fin smuggling in the spotlight

 

Shark fin exporters and smugglers are worried in Manta and Guayaquil. The fifth transitory provision of the draft reform to the Organic Environmental Code establishes that the National Customs Service of Ecuador, within eight months, will deliver to the Ministry of Environment and Water a detailed study of the shipments sent as "dried or frozen fish", as well as all shark species products that have been authorized for export, with dates and responsible parties, from 2004 to 2020.

How many more cases like the 26 tons seized from Hong Kong will be uncovered? In this crusade for transparency, the Assembly has not stood out so far, but it has an opportunity to say that the health - which implies that artisanal fishermen can continue fishing - of the sea matters to them.

*This article was originally published at www.bitacoraec.com and is reposted in Plan V with the author's permission.

Read this article in its original version herw

 

Translated by Manuel Novik