Saving Malaysia's songbirds – the straw-headed bulbul and white-rumped sharma

Students holding up signs protest during the opening day of the World Wildlife Conference outside of the Convention Center in Panama City on Nov 14. 2022. — AFP

While negotiations were tied up at the international climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (Nov 6-20, 2022), half a world away a major meeting on wildlife trade was quietly chugging away.

Without much fanfare – and certainly less publicity than the climate talks get – wildlife protection work was underway at the 19th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). Cites, as it’s known, ran from Nov 14 to 25, 2022.