Wild Touch® Wildlife Foundation

Every time you buy a Wild Touch® product, you make your personal contribution in supporting the worlds wildlife.

Wild Touch® Foundation mission is to support and protect our world’s wildlife.

For each product sold Wild Touch® donates 2 EURO to wildlife protection projects all over the world.

In the 20th century, wildlife all over the world are facing an escalating pressure from a growing human population and its effects, from habitat destruction to spread of disease, illegal wildlife trading and overhunting.

The Board of Directors in the Wild Touch® Wildlife Foundation´s will every year decide which projects we are supporting.

Our contribution to support the world’s wildlife is not limited to any geographical focus, specific species or specific type of wildlife protection projects.

Our guidelines

The guidelines for our support will be to:

• Protect and restore wildlife species and their habitats
• Support local communities' ability to conserve the wildlife resources they depend upon
• Protect the rights of sustainable hunting
• Educate individuals, politicians and organizations about the fact that legal and controlled hunting is one of the most effective ways to ensure a rich and strong population of wildlife.

Wild Touch® will in all aspects support and respect the international laws protecting the wildlife

Wild Touch® will in all aspects support and respect the international laws protecting the wildlife, for instance the CITES Convention (from website www.cites.org):

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

Widespread information nowadays about the endangered status of many prominent species, such as the tiger and elephants, might make the need for such a convention seem obvious.

But at the time when the ideas for CITES were first formed, in the 1960s, international discussion of the regulation of wildlife trade for conservation purposes was something relatively new. With hindsight, the need for CITES is clear. Annually, international wildlife trade is estimated to be worth billions of dollars and to include hundreds of millions of plant and animal specimens. The trade is diverse, ranging from live animals and plants to a vast array of wildlife products derived from them, including food products, exotic leather goods, wooden musical instruments, timber, tourist curios and medicines. Levels of exploitation of some animal and plant species are high and the trade in them, together with other factors, such as habitat loss, is capable of heavily depleting their populations and even bringing some species close to extinction. Many wildlife species in trade are not endangered, but the existence of an agreement to ensure the sustainability of the trade is important in order to safeguard these resources for the future.

Because the trade in wild animals and plants crosses borders between countries, the effort to regulate it requires international cooperation to safeguard certain species from over-exploitation. CITES was conceived in the spirit of such cooperation. Today, it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 30,000 species of animals and plants, whether they are traded as live specimens, fur coats or dried herbs.

CITES was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of IUCN (The World Conservation Union). The text of the Convention was finally agreed at a meeting of representatives of 80 countries in Washington DC., United States of America, on 3 March 1973, and on 1 July 1975 CITES entered in force. The original of the Convention was deposited with the Depositary Government in the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish languages, each version being equally authentic.

CITES is an international agreement to which States (countries) adhere voluntarily. States that have agreed to be bound by the Convention ('joined' CITES) are known as Parties. Although CITES is legally binding on the Parties – in other words they have to implement the Convention – it does not take the place of national laws. Rather it provides a framework to be respected by each Party, which has to adopt its own domestic legislation to ensure that CITES is implemented at the national level.