ABSTRACT
As concerned citizens and biologists we are anxious to understand how natural diversity can be maintained in a world of rapidly diminishing resources – resources that are important to the livelihood of human beings as well as to the millions of other organisms that share this planet. Human activities are causing major changes to the Earth's biota. Extinction, the ultimate change, is occurring today across a broad range of terrestrial and aquatic habitats. Although much of this biodiversity crisis is almost certainly due to human impact during recent centuries, we still do not effectively prioritize conservation action on the basis of what we know about the causes of extinction. In this chapter I shall attempt to show, in particular, that CITES does not focus on the most important threats to wildlife.
