Environment : Wild Debate Expected on Rare Animals : * Which species should be protected? More than 100 nations next week will face their thorniest decisions on the issue in nearly two decades.

The gathering is hopelessly unwieldy, sometimes raucous and always fractious, but for nearly two decades, it has held at bay the potential extinction of globally treasured wildlife.

But when parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (known as CITES) hold their eighth meeting next week in Kyoto, Japan, they will face the most perplexing issues put to them since the 1973 agreement was completed in Washington--issues, according to one participant, that could make or break the convention itself.

Delegates, for example, will be asked to ease protection of African elephants put in harm’s way by the soaring price of ivory. They will be pressed to monitor exports of gallbladders and paws of the American black bear and to declare a moratorium on traffic in heavily traded species of tropical birds.

They will be petitioned to enter new, economically explosive territory by restricting trade in bluefin tuna and requiring permits for the export of mahogany. And they will be called upon to break the pact’s ban on the export and import of cheetahs and leopards.

In all, the 112 governments belonging to CITES will consider more than 100 changes to the crucial treaty appendices that set out differing levels of protection for some 3,000 species of animals and 30,000 species of plants.

The deliberations will take place in an atmosphere unlike any other in international diplomacy. The participants include not only governments, but dozens of environmental and commercial groups as diverse as the Safari Club and Defenders of Wildlife. Here, representatives of the non-government organizations can be given the floor. Here, the United States publishes most of its negotiating positions well in advance, after first inviting public comment on them.

This time, even the meeting site has been controversial, since Japan’s past whaling policies, drift-net fishing and massive imports of endangered sea turtles have made it an object of environmentalists’ scorn.

“It all adds up to this being more complicated and confrontational than any meeting we have ever had,” says Marshall Jones of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Jones is handling preparations for John Turner, director of the agency and leader of the U.S. delegation.

Ginette Hemley, director of Traffic USA, the World Wildlife Fund’s trade-monitoring program, goes a step further.

“This could make or break CITES in several ways,” she says. “It set out to regulate trade, but now there are strong forces whose agenda is to ban trade.”

The fights between conservationists, protectionists, wildlife traders and governments are being brought into increasingly sharp focus by the desire of financially desperate developing nations to make economic use of their wildlife resources.

* African elephants--The dilemma is manifest in the renewed debate over the elephant.

A 2-year-old ban on ivory trade has reduced elephant poaching somewhat, but the killing goes on, and the world environmental community remains committed to protecting all elephants. The ivory ban has not been in force nearly long enough, the argument goes, to ensure the elephant’s survival.

But four southern African countries--Botswana, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe--are asking the CITES delegates to relax protection of their elephant populations. They are not challenging the ivory ban, but they want to sell valuable elephant hides, which they continue to accumulate as a result of the culling of elephant herds.

The convention regulates trade by maintaining three appendices, listing species according to their degree of jeopardy. Appendix I includes species in danger of extinction, and bans them from trade. Appendix II includes species that may become endangered if trade is not controlled, and allows trade only with CITES export permits. Appendix III, widely ignored, is used for unilateral listings by exporting countries.

Because the elephant is listed on Appendix I, the skins cannot be exported. The southern African nations want to move their elephant populations to Appendix II, which would allow them to sell hides even while the ivory ban remains in force.

The United States, a leader in organizing the elephant protection at the 1989 convention of CITES signatories in Geneva, has yet to declare a position on the southern Africans’ petition. But such a relaxation is widely opposed within the environmental community, where it is viewed as backsliding in the direction of a resumed ivory market.

Members of the U.S. government delegation find some merit in the southern Africans’ argument that too much protection could produce circumstances in which wildlife would no longer have commercial value. In that case, there would be no incentive to preserve the habitats that sustain many species.

If they can’t make money on elephants, in other words, why shouldn’t these countries just burn the jungles where the animals live and plant cotton or some other crop they can profit from?

“The southern Africans feel that the protectionists have taken over the convention, and have a design to put every species on Appendix I, to lock them all up,” says Jones of the Fish and Wildlife Service. U.S. officials are not advocating a reopening of the ivory trade, he adds, and do not want poachers to assume that a relaxation of the CITES restrictions would create a legal trade in hides into which they could sneak their illegal ivory.

“But we do see that in African countries with stable or increasing elephant populations, trade in hides might provide the incentive to protect elephants while there is further study of the ivory issue to see whether a truly leakproof ivory-trading system can be developed,” Jones adds.

That notion is scoffed at by environmentalists, who insist that there can be no elephant trade at all. Their solution for poor countries with priceless elephant herds or flocks of tropical birds is “eco-tourism.”

“Kenya has shown that there is huge commercial return from keeping elephants alive to be photographed,” says John Fitzgerald, counsel for Defenders of Wildlife. “People want to come, not only to see elephants, but all the other wildlife that shares the elephant’s ecosystem.”

Such wildlife management advice from afar, as well as CITES intervention, has generated rising resentment among southern Africans, and they have expressed it in at least one initiative that will be brought up in Kyoto.

In a bit of mischief-making meant to put the Europeans who have championed elephant protection on the spot, five southern African countries have proposed that the northern herring also be removed from international trade with an Appendix I listing. The herring, a staple food in Scandinavia, is hardly in danger of extinction.

No other issue in Kyoto will be as complex as the elephant debate, but several will be equally contentious. Notable among them:

* Bluefin tuna--The great bluefin tuna, which can grow to 1,500 pounds and swim at 55 miles an hour, is one of the largest, fastest and widest-ranging fish in the sea. Equally prized by sport- and commercial fishermen and connoisseurs of Japanese sushi and sashimi, its prime cuts can retail for as much as $350 per pound in Tokyo, and individual fish are reported to fetch as much as $30,000.

Although they migrate across oceans, the bluefin have distinct populations. In the western Atlantic, the giants become rarer with each passing year, as the premium prices make it worthwhile for a commercial boat to spend days in quest of a single fish.

Conservationists maintain that not only the giants are endangered--the entire western Atlantic bluefin population is seriously depleted. The spawning population, says the Center for Marine Conservation, has fallen to about 10% of its 1970 level.

“I think the population has crashed,” says Harry Upton, director of the center’s fisheries conservation program.

Carl Safina of the National Audubon Society has led a months-long environmentalist crusade to have the Atlantic bluefin protected by CITES. He wants to have the western population listed in Appendix I, thereby preventing U.S. and Canadian fishermen from exporting their catch to Japan.

Environmentalists maintain this would cause prices for the big fish to drop to a tenth of their present level and end the quest for the giants.

Considering such a listing “premature,” the U.S. delegation has declined to bring such a petition before the Kyoto meeting. Sweden, however, is formally proposing a listing of the western population on Appendix I, and the eastern Atlantic population on Appendix II.

The debate will bring before CITES delegates their first decision on a commercially important marine species. Japan imports bluefin not only from the United States and the western Atlantic, but from about 30 other countries and from both the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Advocates of the listing face formidable opposition--from the commercial fishing industry and from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, in addition to the U.S. and Canadian governments and the European Community.

The industry maintains that breeding stocks of Atlantic bluefin already are on the rebound. Late last year, the ICCAT, which sets quotas, refused a U.S. proposal to reduce the western Atlantic catch by 50% and instead recommended a 10% cut over 1992 and 1993.

* Bears--For centuries, bear gallbladders have been used for medicinal purposes in the Orient, and bear meat, especially the paw, which is believed to contribute to good health, has been a culinary delicacy.

Bile from the gallbladders is used to produce a salt extract for the treatment of ailments of the liver, spleen, gallbladder and stomach, often after other remedies have failed.

Partly because of these folk practices, several Asian species are flirting with extinction. Six are listed on CITES Appendix I, banning their gallbladders, claws, paws and steaks from international commerce.

With these restrictions in place, the American black bear has provided a convenient loophole for Asian hunters, exporters and purveyors of bear parts. The killing of endangered Asian species goes on, say environmental groups, with the paws and gall bladders being sold under the pretense that they were taken from the species found over much of the eastern United States and in Canada.

Last year, the World Wildlife Fund asked the U.S. CITES delegation to petition the Kyoto conference for an Appendix II listing, which would require traded bear parts to be accompanied by export documents identifying their origin.

The request was denied on grounds that such a listing was unneeded since Canada had unilaterally listed its black bear on Appendix III, but the cause has been taken up by the government of Denmark.

Besides listing the American black bear, the Danish delegation is calling for the Asian brown bear, the last unprotected species in that part of the world, to be put on Appendix II.

The Wildlife Fund contends that CITES until now has underestimated the extent of traffic in bear parts in characterizing it as a problem confined to Japan and the Korean peninsula. The trade, say its experts, is extensive and largely illegal.

While the sale of American bear parts to the Asian market is not widespread, bear poaching is not uncommon, even though several states have legal hunts.

Listings of the two species in the Danish resolution, conservationists say, will “close the loop.” No species will be left for use in “laundering” the gallbladders and paws of the endangered Asian species.

* Tropical birds--A few years ago, as many as 40,000 to 80,000 tropical birds were being imported by the United States each year.

Now, largely because of pressure from environmental and animal welfare groups, airlines have quit the wild bird transportation business wholesale. Defenders of Wildlife says the traffic into the United States is now down to a few thousand a year. No U.S. airline still carries them.

But even though hundreds of birds are listed by CITES, and pet dealers increasingly look to ranching operations for their stock, the issue of wild birds remains a huge and controversial one.

Environmentalists’ estimates of the numbers of birds taken from the wild each year range as high as 8 million. As many as 1 million are said to be sold illegally in international markets, although the number is believed to have declined in recent years.

“The issue has changed because there is more knowledge of the estimated 70% mortality, about the decline of species, and about the failure of CITES Appendix II to be sufficiently protective,” says Fitzgerald, the Defenders of Wildlife counsel.

“Many if not most of the countries exporting birds are doing so with absolutely no information on the extent of their wild populations or what levels (of wild bird traffic) can be sustained,” he says.

The U.S. delegation agrees.

At Kyoto, U.S. officials will push for a moratorium on several dozen species believed to be threatened by international trade. Most were identified in the mid-1980s, but there was little response.

“Nobody, including us, has done anything,” says Jones. “Now we are saying that it is time to step forward and call a halt, then look for the funding necessary to determine whether trade is all right or whether we should make permanent restrictions.”

The proposed moratorium has broad support within the U.S. environmental and animal welfare community, with the notable exception of Traffic USA. At World Wildlife, the initiative is viewed as a circumvention of the CITES process--a shortcut to a mass shifting of species from Appendix II to Appendix I.

If adopted, Traffic USA told the U.S. delegation in a letter last month, the moratorium would set a precedent “which could undermine the convention itself,” with the approach being repeated for other groups of species.

“Taken to the extreme, CITES would be transformed from a trade regulating treaty to a trade ban treaty.”