Fighting wildlife trafficking online

The Internet is the world's largest marketplace. Unregulated, anonymous and virtually unlimited in reach, it offers endless opportunities for criminal activities, among them a flourishing illegal trade in protected wildlife. IFAW’s investigations of this trade have revealed a shocking array of wildlife and wildlife products for sale online.

Among them:

• Elephant ivory
• Tiger bags, tiger-bone medicine and even a live ‘pet’ tiger, as well as cheetah coats and leopards skins
• Products made from rhino horns and elephant parts
• Whole shells and jewelry items made from the endangered hawksbill turtle
• An emerging market in endangered birds and their eggs
• Live primates for sale, including one gorilla offered by a seller claiming to be in London, and four baby chimpanzees
• Traditional bear bile medicines ‘farmed’ in the most cruel ways from the black bear
• Shahtoosh shawls made from the wool of an endangered Tibetan antelope--which the sale or purchase of is illegal.
• Live reptiles and their skins, many from endangered or protected species

Tracking Illegal Internet wildlife trade

In 2008, IFAW embarked upon the largest investigation the organization had ever attempted to understand the scale of the Internet wildlife trade. Our report, Killing with Keystrokes presented some astonishing findings about the selling of wildlife on sites in the UK, France and Germany.

In the course of 6 weeks, we found more than 7,000 wild animals and animal products for sale online and tracked more than US $30 million worth of advertised animal products.

Shockingly, even these figures understate the scale of the problem since the survey was restricted to monitoring only a few of the world’s most endangered species.

Based on the results of our investigation, IFAW was able to persuade eBay in October 2008 to ban the sale of all ivory products on its platforms worldwide. The ban came into effect in January 2009. Constant vigilance is necessary to ensure that ivory products do not again appear on this and other web commerce sites. In 2011, a survey of websites in the UK, France, Portugal, Spain and Germany, found a thriving trade in ivory items--which the legality of most is questionable.

Although Killing with Keystrokes in 2008 identified the United States as being responsible for more  than two-thirds of the online trade in the investigation, three European countries – the UK, France and Germany – when combined, accounted for 15.2% of the total trade in CITES Appendix I species, of which 65% of items were elephant products.

Killing with Keystrokes, 2.0: IFAW’s Investigation into the European Online Ivory Trade revisits these three countries plus two more–Portugal and Spain.

Each country investigation set out to assess the volume and value of ivory trade on sites from Killing with Keystrokes that were still active, as well as new sites on which ivory trade was occurring. These investigations aimed to gather useful data for governments, law enforcement officials and Internet platforms in each country to provide further understanding of the nature of Internet ivory trade and suggest methods to help counter wildlife trade and aid further enforcement.

Investigating cruelty

One reason online trading of protected and endangered wildlife and wildlife products is able to flourish is that so much of it goes unmonitored. This is why our investigations are so important.

As well as our Killing with Keystrokes report, IFAW has undertaken a number of other investigations that have helped inform policy makers and legislators on the size and nature of this cruel trade.

• In 2004, our report Elephants on the High Street: an investigation into ivory trade in the UK  documented the vast quantities of ivory illegally sold over the Internet with little or no monitoring or law enforcement.
• Our 2005 report, Caught in the Web: Wildlife Trade on the Internet, found more than 9,000 wild animals and animal products for sale in just 1 week. Significantly, this only counted English language Internet sites and was only monitoring 5 categories of protected species.
• Our Dutch Animal Trade Survey 2006: Caught in the Web reported on the legal and illegal trade in wild animals on private and commercial Dutch-language web sites. In 1 month alone, more than 150 Dutch-language sites were found selling products from endangered species.
• Our global 2007 follow-up report, Bidding for Extinction, revealed a rampant trade in elephant ivory across eBay’s global network of auction sites. Our 1-week snapshot survey tracked more than 2,275 ivory items for sale on 8 national eBay web sites (UK, Australia, China, Germany, Netherlands, France, Canada and USA).

Looking forward to a future without an illegal online wildlife trade

Contemporary international law has fallen behind this deadly Internet trade. IFAW campaigns to protect animals from wildlife trafficking wherever and however it occurs. We urge governments and web commerce site providers to crack down on wildlife trafficking.