Elephant ivory still being sold on eBay despite 12-year ban
Sellers are misrepresenting the supplies utilized in sure gadgets and typically utilizing “code words” to disguise illicit listings, researchers from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology on the University of Kent, in England, mentioned in an announcement on Monday.
“Despite eBay’s strict policy on Animal and Wildlife Products, there is still an ongoing trade in ivory, mostly concealed as other non-restricted materials,” mentioned co-author David Roberts in an announcement.
He mentioned detecting unlawful gross sales of ivory gadgets could be tough, because the phrase “ivory” can be utilized to explain a shade. But “companies like eBay have the resources and data” that may very well be mobilized to deal with the unlawful wildlife commerce, Roberts added.
A spokesperson for eBay mentioned the corporate is a founding member of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online and works with the World Wildlife Fund and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
“We have global teams dedicated to upholding standards on our marketplace, and over a recent two year period we blocked or removed over 265,000 listings prohibited under our animal products policy,” mentioned the eBay spokesperson in an announcement to CNN Business.
But Roberts advised CNN Business that he want to see impartial verification of the listings information, including that he and different researchers have had restricted success in getting illicit listings taken down utilizing eBay’s report operate.
Roberts and fellow researcher Sofia Venturini discovered that some descriptions of netsuke — carved objects which are sometimes manufactured from elephant ivory and connected to Japanese kimonos — are misrepresenting the gadgets.
Listings of netsuke which had been manufactured from elephant ivory had been incessantly described as bone, in response to researchers, who had been capable of determine ivory gadgets by checking pictures of the merchandise for Schreger strains — a singular sample discovered on the fabric.
Only 1.3% to six.9% of ivory netsuke gadgets had been eliminated by eBay when researchers checked the listings once more after a month, they mentioned. More than 50% had been sold, whereas half of the unsold examples had been relisted.
“If eBay was effectively enforcing its policy… on ivory, these items would have been removed,” researchers mentioned.
Roberts praised websites similar to Etsy and Preloved as doing a “fantastic job” limiting gross sales of things linked to the unlawful wildlife commerce. “If other companies can do it certainly eBay and the like can also do it,” he added.
The researchers’ paper has been printed within the journal Tropical Conservation Science.
