Environmental Groups Ask USTR to Bring USMCA Dispute Over Vaquita
After a ban on imported fish from an area of the Upper Gulf of California in Mexico failed to stop illegal fishing that threatens a nearly extinct porpoise, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Environmental Investigation Agency are asking the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to ask the tri-national Commission on Environmental Cooperation to establish a formal factual record of Mexico's failure to enforce its ban on gillnets in that region. Once the record is established, the groups are asking USTR to initiate a dispute against Mexico over the issue.
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The NRDC successfully won a ban on imported fish from that region in 2018 from the Court of International Trade (see 1808140013); the ban was later broadened by the National Marine Fisheries Service (see 2004220030).
“Mexican officials have promised again and again to get illegal gillnets out of the vaquita’s habitat, but they’ve utterly failed to do so,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The United States and the whole international community must finally put real pressure on Mexico to act. The Mexican government has a legal and moral obligation to save these little porpoises, and time for real action is running out.”
The groups say that in response to the ban on imported fish, Mexico issued new regulations on fishing in the vaquita's habitat, and those regulations could protect the vaquita, and an endangered fish called the totoaba, if they were enforced. The regulations prohibit not just fishing with gillnets, but owning them in the region, and require that gillnets be turned in to authorities. They also established a small no-fishing-at-all zone.
But the groups say that the agency responsible for collecting nets said in February that it had no information on how many were turned in. They also say that Mexico has not devoted enough personnel to monitor the area.