About this episode:
(The second of two episodes recorded to coincide with CITES CoP 20.)
This episode finds David in conversation with Australian filmmaker Abraham Joffe – director of Trade Secret, the award-winning documentary exposing the global trade in polar bear skins. While climate change relentlessly erodes the sea ice these animals depend on, Abraham reveals how polar bears are still legally trophy-hunted, skinned and sold as luxury rugs and taxidermy, their fate decided in conference halls thousands of miles from the Arctic.
David and Abraham explore how Trade Secret follows journalists, advocates and Arctic guides – including previous guest Iris Ho – as they investigate both legal and illegal polar bear markets, and push for the species to be “uplisted” to the highest level of CITES protection. Along the way, they discuss the blurred line between filmmaking and journalism, the ethical weight that comes with shaping a story in the edit, and the power – and limits – of a documentary to change international policy.
Crucially, the conversation also turns north, to the Indigenous communities who have lived alongside polar bears for generations. Abraham reflects on the cultural and subsistence importance of traditional hunting, how little money actually reaches those communities from the luxury trade, and why giving polar bears the protection they deserve doesn’t have to mean erasing the people who share their icy home.
N.b. To clarify a couple of statistics raised in the podcast episode; according to the 2024/25 IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group report, of the now 20 Polar Bear subpopulations, 10 are data deficient, 3 are likely decreasing, 5 are likely stable, and 2 are likely increasing. As of 2015, Polar Bears are listed as Vulnerable under the IUCN Red List with this status set to be reviewed in 2025… as of writing (8/12/25), any changes to this trend have yet to be made public.
David's thoughts:
CITES COP20: Reflections From the Floor and the Fight Ahead
Not simply a curious conservationist armed with microphone and notebook, I was attending CITES COP20 on behalf of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation and the Manta Trust – I serve as a conservation ambassador for the former and a patron for the latter. DSWF was there as part of the African Elephant Coalition Support Group, resisting yet another attempt to reopen the ivory trade, while the Manta Trust was fighting for the long-overdue uplisting of all mobulid species: seven devil rays and three manta rays.
Before boarding my Samarkand flight, I mentioned my plans to a previous podcast guest (a certain Mr Christopher Packham.) Without hesitation, he urged me to watch Trade Secret, a documentary that digs deep into the inner workings of CITES. The film, as many of you now know, exposes how self-interest, national agendas, and well-funded lobbies can steer the conversation far more forcefully than conservation ever does. I watched a press screener of it on the plane.
Walking into the conference hall in Samarkand with Abraham’s warnings echoing in my ears was sobering. In those first two days (as I shared in a video), I could feel – not just in theory but in my own lived reality – the urgency that Trade Secret so compellingly lays bare.
Two weeks later, with COP20 now concluded, I find myself writing from a place of both gratitude and frustration. This conference delivered a remarkable slate of conservation victories – but also a disheartening number of missteps and unrealised opportunities.
A Conference of Real Victories…
A notable list of species received desperately needed protection. The mobulid rays – one of my primary reasons for attending – were finally uplisted. So were several shark species, and the golden-bellied mangabey that Iris Ho had come to champion. Sloths, Hornbills, Vultures – all receiving uplisted protection. Proposals to downlist vulnerable species were rejected, including a move to weaken protections for peregrine falcons – an especially meaningful outcome for those of us in the UK, where this endangered species still clings to our landscape.
These successes matter. They matter enormously.
But as is so often the case in conservation, good news can cast a long shadow over the stories we’d prefer not to tell.
…and the Defeats
Tarantulas sought greater protection and didn’t receive it. Vipers lost out too. All fungi were deemed outside of CITES’ remit and therefore dismissed – all fungi! Plant species (brazilwood, guggul, red doussié, African rosewood and Parlatore’s podocarp) – ecologically vital, foundational to ecosystems – failed to gain protection. In week one, one sole plant species was uplisted to appendix 1. And don’t get me started on the poor, poor critically endangered eels who sit atop an international trade worth €2bn!
And yet, despite failing to receive additional protections, these few examples represent the species fortunate enough to have reached the discussion stage. CITES is profoundly constrained: two weeks, once every three years, with only a fraction of the planet’s imperilled species making it onto the agenda at all. Those that do are usually the charismatic ones – the big, the fluffy, the photogenic. For example, precious hours, sometimes entire days, are devoted to elephants alone. (How any botanist or herpetologist can hold affection for elephants, knowing whole genera of plant or amphibian species may fail to receive protection simply because humanity cannot resolve its love/hate relationship with ivory, is beyond me.) These are the species the public recognises, the ones newspapers could put on the front page, the ones that help sway delegates. And so they dominate.
But you will rarely see a tarantula on the front page of The Guardian. You’re unlikely to watch an environment minister grilled on national television for enabling the trade in endangered timber. But if an MP were to wear a polar bear skin – personally hunted and killed legally – into Parliament? Then yes, every outlet on Earth would descend. Or at least, we’d hope they would. This imbalance in attention is part of the problem. And it is – perversely – why Trade Secret feels so important.
Why Trade Secret Matters More Than Ever
Trade Secret uses a globally beloved species as a lens through which to reveal something much larger: how CITES functions, how it fails, how NGOs are funded, how that funding can distort priorities, and how much more powerful international democracy could be. It shows that the most meaningful pressure in conservation doesn’t always come from NGOs, scientists, or even individual delegates. It comes from public scrutiny – something nation-states are far less comfortable ignoring.
The irony is that although CITES is an open forum (even actors can attend!), it is treated as though that openness guarantees scrutiny. Anyone can observe – NGOs, governments, lobbyists, journalists. And yet almost no one reports meaningfully on what unfolds. The assumption seems to be that if CITES were important, surely people must already be paying attention. They aren’t. If they were, we would see more outrage. More momentum. More accountability. Trade Secret offers a chance to change that.
What Comes Next
My plan now is twofold:
First, I intend to support Trade Secret wholeheartedly. Not because I’m uniquely obsessed with polar bears – though they are extraordinary – but because they serve as a gateway. If the film succeeds – if it is seen widely, wins awards, secures global media oxygen – it can open a conversation conservation desperately needs. It can show that CITES is not an obscure bureaucratic gathering, but a political battleground where species live or die depending on public will.
Second, I plan to return to the next COP in three years – hopefully not alone. I want to bring the world’s media with me: The Telegraph, The New York Times, The Guardian, and any publication willing to understand that what happens inside those meeting rooms deserves a far brighter spotlight. As I sat in an airport lounge in Istanbul awaiting my onward flight to Samarkand, I reached out to a number of British media outlets to see who was sending journalists to cover CITES. None were.
If we fail to make CITES visible, species will continue to disappear quietly, anonymously, without even the dignity of public acknowledgement. And in the three-year gap between now and the next CITES COP, species will go extinct. That is not speculation – it is a certainty.
I am deeply grateful to Abraham and to everyone who backed Trade Secret. They have given conservationists a tool – a genuine, rare opportunity – to reshape the narrative around CITES. But unless the film reaches the audiences it needs, unless people truly understand what is at stake, it risks becoming yet another example of a preventable tragedy unfolding in plain sight. Because if the polar bear vanishes in the next ten or fifty years, the world will look back on this film not as a warning heeded, but as one of the great missed conservation opportunities of the modern age…
…and that is something we cannot allow to happen.
LINKS:
Trade Secret – https://www.tradesecretfilm.com/
Malcom Douglas (Wiki) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Douglas_(documentary_maker)
