At its latest triennial conference, the global wildlife trade body removed the Caribbean monk seal from its lists of species under trade regulation for a grim reason: the species has already been exploited to extinction.
The last recorded sighting of a Caribbean monk seal, one of only three seal species adapted to live in warm waters, occurred in 1952. Since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora entered into force in 1975, it has recorded just a single trade in historical specimens.
The seal’s removal was therefore little more than housekeeping. In an almost clinical discussion lasting less than eight minutes, the Caribbean monk seal was quietly erased from CITES’ lists, just as it has vanished from the world.
As a treaty body, CITES is meant to ensure that other wild species do not meet the same fate as the Caribbean monk seal, whose extinction is widely attributed to intensive hunting. Such excessive exploitation is not a relic of the past: a 2019 global assessment of biodiversity found that exploitation is the second biggest threat to land and freshwater species, and the leading threat to marine organisms.
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The Hawaiian monk seal is one of two remaining monk seal species following the Caribbean monk seal’s extinction, image via National Marine Sanctuaries/Wikimedia
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