GenevaCountries have voted against decreasing protections for southern white rhinos at the 18^th Conference of the Parties for CITES, the wildlife trade treaty, underway in Geneva, Switzerland. International trade in rhino parts has been banned since 1977, but at this year’s conference, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and Namibia proposed loosening restrictions for their respective countries. The vote still needs to be finalized at the plenary session at the end, when all appendix change proposals passed in committee are officially adopted.

"I was encouraged and relieved to see parties resoundingly reject the proposal calling for legal international trade in rhino horn," says Taylor Tench, a wildlife policy analyst for the Environmental Investigation Agency. "Rhino populations remain under immense pressure from poaching