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<< Notifications of 2000

Notification to the Parties

No. 2000/072 Geneva, 14 December 2000

CONCERNING:

CITES Identification Guide – Turtles and Tortoises

1. The Secretariat hereby announces the publication of the latest volume in Environment Canada’s series of easy-to-use identification guides. This volume deals with turtles and tortoises.

2. This guide was produced by Environment Canada and Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (PROFEPA) – Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (SEMARNAP), Mexico, in cooperation with other organizations.

3. It is designed in particular to help staff responsible for enforcing CITES to do their work more quickly and efficiently. The use of the guide requires no advanced level of training or previous knowledge of biology. It uses a simple visual approach, which facilitates the identification process.

4. The guide contains:

– key pages, which illustrate the morphological characteristics that distinguish different species;

– descriptive pages, which illustrate species that are readily recognizable, but also species or subspecies that require closer observation;

– icons showing the parts and derivatives used;

– a list of species – yet more difficult to identify – that must be referred to an expert and the list of species not illustrated in the guide;

– indexes of the scientific names of all species illustrated in the guide as well as their common names in English, French and Spanish.

5. The guide was published with the cooperation of the CITES Secretariat, TRAFFIC North America, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, and the Biodiversity Convention Office, Environment Canada. The Humane Society of the United States has subsidized the worldwide distribution of the guide.

6. Other guides in the same series were previously published on Crocodilians (1995) and Birds (1994).

7. All guides in the series are published in English, French and Spanish and can be obtained from:

Environment Protection Publications
Environment Canada
OTTAWA, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0H3

Tel: +1 (819) 953 5750
Fax: +1 (819) 994 5629
Email: epspubs@ec.gc.ca