Red Alert: How Fraudulent Siamese Rosewood Exports from Laos and Cambodia are undermining CITES Protection

The 2013 listing of Siamese rosewood (Dalbergia cochinchinensis spp) on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has failed to protect the species from levels of trade detrimental to its survival in the wild. The CITES listing for Siamese rosewood has largely failed because the actions of Laos and Cambodia – Parties to CITES and key range states for the species – have fundamentally undermined efforts to curb trade. Siamese rosewood now presents an important test case of CITES’s ability to function as a credible international instrument to regulate trade in threatened timber species when some Parties willfully flout their obligations.