The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has published a report highlighting the unprecedented scale of the online illegal wildlife trade.
The report, entitled ‘Disrupt: Wildlife Cybercrime – Uncovering the scale of online wildlife trade’, was released today, and shows that the online illegal wildlife trade is openly operating on many popular online marketplace platforms.
The trade of both live animals and body parts poses a threat to the survival of certain species, and poses a significant challenge to conservationists and governments trying to protect these species. By determining the scale of the problem and identifying the platforms used by animal traders, the IFAW aims to tackle the problem.
What did the report discover?
The investigators carried out research in France, Germany, Russia and the UK over a six week period in 2017, and uncovered 5,381 advertisements across 106 online marketplaces and social media platforms offering live endangered and threatened animals and animal products.
One fifth of the products being advertised were ivory, or suspected ivory, demonstrating that the illegal ivory trade continues to be a significant problem. Further, 80% of specimens were live animals, and 45% of these were reptiles, particularly live tortoises and turtles.
The IFAW hopes that the report will encourage online marketplaces to adopt stricter rules and codes of practice around animal trading, taking eBay as an example. One of the world’s largest online marketplaces, eBay is an IFAW partner and was an early adopter of strict policies to prevent the online illegal wildlife trade using its platform.
What has IFAW said about the results?
IFAW’s Wildlife Crime Programme Director, Rikkert Reijnen, emphasised that the results of the research have uncovered only a small percentage of the total online illegal wildlife trade, and expressed a hope that the report would lead to comprehensive action against illegal wildlife traders.
He said: “The illegal wildlife trade represents a multifaceted threat to animal life… With the release of this report, IFAW remains committed to bringing key stakeholders together from both the private and public sector to provide information, education and support in the fight against cybercrime because, put simply, it takes a network to defeat a network.”
