CONVENTION IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE OF ENDANGERED SPECIES

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is an international agreement between governments, drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The text of the convention was agreed upon in 1973, and CITES entered into force on 1 July 1975. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival and it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 33,000 species of animals and plants. In order to ensure that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was not violated, the Secretariat of GATT was consulted during the drafting process.
Only one species protected by CITES, the Spix's Macaw, has become extinct in the wild as a result of trade since the Convention entered into force (but see case studies in Hutton and Dickinson and Stiles for further discussion of the role CITES has played in the fate of particular species).

http://www.cites.org/