Educate yourself before traveling abroad
Americans in foreign lands often see items they can't buy at home. But many tourist shops sell jewelry and trinkets made from the body parts of endangered species. And the open sale of such items overseas does not mean that they are legal to buy or bring back into the United States.
The plight of hawksbill sea turtles illustrates this problem. Hawksbills live throughout the tropical and subtropical waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans and have nesting beaches in at least 60 countries. But they have been decimated—and for the most frivolous of reasons.
For centuries hawksbills were killed for their beautiful mottled "tortoise" shells, which were used to make jewelry, decorative combs and hairpins, forks and spoons, and statuettes. These gentle turtles have been hunted throughout history.
Since 1975, hawksbill sea turtles have been fully protected from international trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). (Because of an exception to this rule, Japan was allowed to trade in hawksbill shells until 1993.) This protection has been vital in ensuring hawksbills' continued survival.
Recently, several nations, including Cuba and Japan, have challenged the biological status of the species—trying to remove the hawksbills from the "critically endangered" list compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—The World Conservation Union. IUCN convened a special Standards and Petitions Subcommittee to consider the challenge and reaffirmed the turtles' critically endangered status. This means that hawksbills clearly require the highest level of protection—a prohibition on all international trade.
But many hawksbills are still killed, and products made from hawksbill shells are still sold in tourist markets worldwide. Travelers overseas shouldn't buy products made from hawksbills or from any other wildlife. Such purchases can encourage the poaching of critically endangered species and may well have legal consequences for the buyer—beginning with confiscation at the U.S. border.
For more information on the trade in products made from wildlife, visit the Wildlife section of our website.
