June 29, 2016: Today marks the first anniversary of the passing of Peter Pueschel, Director for International Environmental Agreements at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). An extraordinary human who spent his life fighting for non-humans, Peter left behind a legacy for us mortals to continue championing species conservation and being the voice of the voiceless. His demise last year, sudden as it was, shocked the international conservation fraternity and stakeholders at all levels. He is sorely missed by the humans who worked with him, and more by non-humans who he lived for.
“It touches my heart to see animals. When I see them play, hunt, live…
I feel I can learn so much from them. Their social behaviour is so beautiful;
the way that whales, for instance, care for their young, or how nurturing
and protective elephants are of the little babies in a herd.
There is much we can learn from animals about
living in harmony with each other.”
~Peter Pueschel on ‘Why Animals Matter to Me’, IFAW
Peter was known for his fight to keep elephants in Appendix I of CITES and to see that illegal ivory trade was a thing of the past. “I met him in 1990 on a CITES Standing Committee just after that famous Lausanne CoP that listed African elephants in Appendix I,” says Vivek Menon, Executive Director and CEO, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI). From then on, for 25 years, Peter was a steady voice first for Greenpeace, then IFAW, and always supporting the Government of India as well as WTI in their positions on elephants.
A veteran at conventions such as CITES, CBD (the Convention on Biological Diversity) and CMS (the Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species), Peter’s seemingly easy demeanour belied the tough determination and focus he operated with, often resulting in powerful interventions. “If anyone could influence a meeting from the NGO tables, Peter could,” says Mark Simmonds, Senior Marine Scientist, Humane Society International, who knew him for 25 years.
It was not only elephants that moved Peter. At the 11th Conference of Parties of CMS in Ecuador in February 2014, Peter was with Team IFAW specifically supporting 21 migratory shark and ray species for listing in Appendices I and/or II, as well as proposals on listing polar bears and African lions in Appendix II. Thirty-one migratory species were finally adopted into the convention’s list of protected species, including the 21 species. Amongst them were some of the most endangered, like sawfishes, mobula rays and hammerhead sharks.
At CoP CBD in 2012, Peter brought animals at the centre of the debate on Climate Change. “Forests are being damaged by climate change. And we don’t know the effect that will have over the next 20, 50, 100 years. The migration routes of elephants from one forest to the other may just disappear because there are no grasslands for the elephants to roam. And with that the whole biodiversity may change shape as well, in a way that hurts the livelihood of humans, in fact the ability of humans to live as we do on this Earth. That’s why we must place animals at the centre of the debate of mitigating climate change impacts. They are very good indicators of the damage that climate change is causing”, he advocated.
Peter led IFAW into the fight to end online wildlife trade and influenced eBay to ban ivory auctions. The wildlife law enforcement training programmes he developed are today instrumental in adding teeth to combat illegal wildlife trade. As Steven Broad, Executive Director of TRAFFIC said in his message, “Peter’s numerous contributions to the conservation of wild species and addressing illegal wildlife trade over the years are a fitting memorial to his life’s work.”
Excerpted (with minor changes) from an article by Rupa Gandhi Chaudhary, Jt Director, Wildlife Trust of India, published in Sanctuary Asia August 2015.
