The fact that more than 130 nations recently convened in Campo Grande, Brazil, and reached a consensus is somewhat noteworthy. Not a trade agreement. Not a truce. Not a commitment to climate finance that would quietly fall apart in two years. They decided to extend the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals‘ protections for forty migratory animal species, including cheetahs, snowy owls, giant otters, and several shark species. The number of species covered by the treaty has increased to over 1,200. That is a working multilateral agreement by any reasonable standard. which, by today’s standards, makes it nearly uncommon.
There aren’t many reasons to pause with optimism in the current diplomatic environment, so it’s worth pausing on that. Trade disputes are being reframed as ethical issues. Decades-old alliances are faltering. International organizations are either deliberately undermined or circumvented. However, something is genuinely working here in the comparatively obscure area of global governance that deals with migratory wildlife. The evidence presented at the same Brazil summit made it evident that current protections are not slowing the accelerating decline of species. However, the lists continue to expand, the countries continue to appear, and the framework is holding.
The fact that the topic is not as politicized as trade or security can be is one of the reasons why wildlife treaties work where other agreements falter. There is no ideological significance to a snowy owl migrating from the Arctic across twelve different national jurisdictions. It doesn’t pose a threat to anyone’s sovereignty that domestic constituencies could mobilize against. Biology itself demonstrates the necessity of cooperation. Birds don’t wait for political conditions to improve before crossing borders, which appears to be the unique benefit of avian diplomacy.
Most people are unaware of how long this place’s history dates back. Acting on Canada’s behalf, the United States and Great Britain signed a treaty in 1916 that established controlled hunting seasons and prohibited unrestricted hunting of migratory birds. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, one of the earliest pieces of international environmental law still in effect, was a direct result of that agreement. Over the years, treaties were signed with the Soviet Union, Mexico, and Japan. Instead of being constructed in a single moment of triumph, the architecture was developed gradually. It most likely survived because of that slow, species-by-species, country-by-country pattern.
Similar principles apply to the Convention on Migratory Species, which was signed in Bonn in 1979 and currently has 130 parties. It doesn’t impose uniform regulations from above. After identifying and listing threatened species, it instructs the range states—the nations that these species pass through—to negotiate their own legally binding and non-binding agreements. The end product is a multi-layered system of scientific working groups, memoranda of understanding, and regional treaties, each tailored to the unique biology of particular animals. It has an almost federalist quality. It develops in accordance with the recognition that a protocol safeguarding Siberian cranes throughout Central Asia differs from one safeguarding albatrosses over the Southern Ocean.
None of this indicates that the system is functioning adequately. Geopolitical instability and wildlife trade have a troubling relationship, according to research published in journals like BioScience. As international cooperation fractures, the enforcement mechanisms that protect endangered species also tend to thin out.
Despite being listed on every protected list, tigers are still being stolen for traditional medicine markets. There is still a significant discrepancy between what is stated in the treaties and what actually occurs on the ground. It is plausible to argue that some of these agreements serve more as aspirational documents than as legally binding agreements.
However, it’s possible that the model itself contains lessons that have not yet been fully assimilated by broader diplomacy. Because they establish modest and attainable obligations rather than broad commitments, and because the topic—the survival of animals that cross international borders without permission—has a kind of moral clarity that most geopolitical disputes just don’t, wildlife treaties typically endure political cycles. Tariffs are a topic of debate. The case for the extinction of snowy owls is more difficult to make.
Observing these agreements build up over decades gives the impression that avian diplomacy succeeds because migratory species have the practical effect of making interdependence indisputable rather than because countries suddenly become giving or visionary. The bird that feeds along the coastlines of one nation, breeds in another, and winters in a third compels all three governments to engage in a dialogue that they might otherwise avoid. That isn’t idealistic. Cooperation is the only sensible course of action because ecology is doing what geopolitics cannot.
