International Fund for Animal Welfare | May 18, 2007

Tell eBay to stop all ivory auctions

Download the results of IFAW’s eBay investigation:
Bidding for Extinction.

Dear Janet,

Did you know that thousands of animal and wildlife products made from endangered species are bought and sold over the Internet every day?

IFAW investigations have uncovered some shocking wildlife offers online: wild leather and fur handbags, shoes and clothes from endangered reptiles, rhinoceros horn trophies, an alarming number of items made from ivory and much more.

As the largest Internet marketplace for ivory sales, eBay is directly and indirectly assisting the illegal trade in wildlife as well as the poachers who create it.

Demand that eBay end illegal wildlife offers from its auction sites immediately

Increasingly, illegal wildlife products are distributed online as the means by which the illicit trade in wildlife is conducted. This enables illegal trade at tremendous speeds to go completely unchecked: a trade so great that it is now estimated to be second only to illegal trafficking in drugs and weapons.

IFAW recently conducted an in-depth survey of ivory products for sale on eBay. During a one week investigation of eight eBay sites, a whopping 2,275 ivory items were found. More than 94% of these ivory items did not comply with eBay’s own stated standards and the remaining 6% were most likely illegal.

There is no single, well-defined, consistent global eBay policy governing the listing of ivory on its various national web sites. Each national eBay site has its own rules, almost all of which are vague. Illegal items taken down in one country can easily be reposted or accessed on another eBay country website.

Fueling the poaching of elephants in Africa and Asia

The illegal wildlife trade is a lucrative business for poachers that encourages them to kill more animals. More than 20,000 elephants are killed annually today to supply these illegal ivory markets. Although much of this ivory is still sold through traditional markets, the killing won’t stop until the vast online outlets for ivory are shut down.

As the largest seller of illegal ivory on the Internet, eBay needs to ban sales of ivory globally on all its sites and strictly enforce such a ban. The trade in ivory is cruel and unsustainable. eBay must take action to ensure it plays no part in this ongoing tragedy for elephants.

eBay has expressed its commitment to a global policy on the ivory trade and a willingness to work closely with IFAW on drafting such a policy and its enforcement. But words are not enough.

Please take a moment to send a letter to eBay corporate headquarters urging e-Bay to enforce a complete global ban on ivory sales.

Thank you for speaking out,

Fred O’Regan
President and CEO

P.S. eBay must accept responsibility for the impact that trade in wild animal products on its sites is having on the world’s wildlife. Please tell eBay in your own words why allowing the sale of illegal wildlife products is wrong.

(If you will go to the IFAW website there is a petition letter you can submit your name to that will go directly to eBay. I also added the request that bone and coral products also be stopped).

There are millions of old animal products in private homes around the world. Remnants of family mementos from past generations. An inherited ivory carving from someones great grandparents sold over ebay to joe blogg who lives in Paris, for example, has what impact on new ivory being poached??

Banning the sale of old, registered stockpiles of ivory raises the price of "illegal" ivory making it an even more lucrative opportunity for the poor, desperate poacher in the forests of Africa to go out and kill an elephant. There is sufficient stocks of Gov ivory to satisfy demand for decades. Rather invest in controlling the process of trading`"legal" ivory which would drop prices and be a diss-incentive to poaching.

I published an article about e-bay taking the step of banning ivory trade without legal documents a good year ago. Here the link to the article [URL=http://www.bushdrums.com/news/index.php?shownews=141]e-bay stops illegal ivory trade[/URL]
Hence this campaign surprises me a little.

I also think that if all stock of Gov. ivory was legally sold at dumping prices, ivory would loose it's value and ruin the market for poaching.

I'm going to try to play devils advocate here bwanamich. As long as people know that there is a desire for ivory,
(i.e. eBay and other sites, Asian carvers, mid-Easterners for their dagger handles) there will always be poaching to obtain more ivory. Were there an international law that no ivory products could be sold anywhere, then poaching would drop dramatically or stop completely. There are many people who see ivory items on eBay that didn't have any interest in ivory until they saw it there. They see it, think it is pretty and not knowing or caring that an elephant has been killed for it, they buy it. It is because people know others will pay astonomical rates for some of these pieces that Asia continues to illegally import ivory and that Africans, Indians, etc continue to poach and smuggle the ivory. An ivory carving of your great grandparents could be passed down to future generations or sold quietly to a friend who might want it without brinigng attention to it and adding to the pressure being put on locals to kill for ivory.

When a shipload of ivory is discovered, how can anyone tell whether it was old registered ivory from an animal that died of natural causes as opposed to new ivory just poached? To my knowledge, there is absolutely no way of marking an ivory tusk (without ruining it) that would insure it was from an elephant who died of natural causes.
And as you well know, it was for years the very people put in place to protect elephants, that were doing the poaching. If rangers could stay in their vehicles on the road and just kill the elephants they were paid to protect, do you think they would be honest about saying it was from a natural death or killed for ivory sales? Come on now!

I used to shop on eBay quite often. Then I started seeing so many jewelry pieces of ivory, bone and coral that I got disgusted by it and quit. By the way, how does an average person tell if something represented as bone jewelry is really bone and not ivory? Is there any way? Is this just another way for people to get ivory sold without being caught? Coral jewelry was also quite common. Carsten can tell you what is happening to the coral beds all over the world.

An interesting personal note: when I was in Kenya several years ago I went out on a censusing with elephant researchers. As we were heading back to camp I spotted what I thought was a piece of tusk. I asked them to stop and indeed it was a small piece of ivory tusk tip about 3.5 inches long, probably broken off during a fight. I would have loved to have kept it as a souvenir, but it would have been my luck to get arrested at JKIA. Thus we drove to park headquarters and turned it over to KWS.

eBay can, and should, do much better than they have been, not just with ivory but with all products from previouly live wildlife, and I can only hope that enough people complaining about it will make them think twice and monitor what people are selling. The government finally stepped in when they were allowing someone to sell a kidney online. Ironic isn't it that one kidney is more imporant than the world's wildlife?

When a shipload of ivory is discovered, how can anyone tell whether it was old registered ivory from an animal that died of natural causes as opposed to new ivory just poached?

DNA. Some of those shipments have been traced back to Zambia through DNA records. Its a monumental task to DNA all Gov ivory stocks and expensive to boot. However, it would go a long way to controlling trade. Experts can also tell old ivory from new ivory by its apperance, etc. It won't tell the cause of death but can assist in determining poaching trends and effectiveness of anti-poaching methods.

And as you well know, it was for years the very people put in place to protect elephants, that were doing the poaching. If rangers could stay in their vehicles on the road and just kill the elephants they were paid to protect, do you think they would be honest about saying it was from a natural death or killed for ivory sales? Come on now!

I don't dis-agree. However, there are control factors that can easily prevent this. Again it costs money to set-up. Every park, etc can have a trained crime site investigation team that need to be called out to any elephant carcass found in the area. They can quite easily arrive at the cause of death. These individuals need to be highly motivated and well paid. All game scouts on patrol get issued a standard amount of ammunition and every round used needs to be accounted for by a written report, etc. There are others.

By the way, how does an average person tell if something represented as bone jewelry is really bone and not ivory? Is there any way? Is this just another way for people to get ivory sold without being caught?

Not easy at all for the average person. Ivory is considerably heavier than bone as it contains no pourousness as most bones do. The color is also an indicator to an expert. Hippo tushes have long been referred to as "poor man's ivory" because of its similarity.

Were there an international law that no ivory products could be sold anywhere, then poaching would drop dramatically or stop completely.

I've left this for last cause it merits a longer explanation; The ban of ivory trade in Kenya for the past several decades has NOT stopped the poaching pandemic of ivory. On the contrary, it has fueled it. Let me explain; The desperate rural peasant, who struggles to feed himself and his family is prepared to do anything to survive. Surveys have shown that the average peasant in rural Africa earns as little as $20 - $30 ANNUALLY!! Reports have indicated that the price paid to a poacher for a pair of ivory tusks averages $40 to $50! The incentive for the poacher is just too good to pass up when faced with the harsh conditions of his family's subsistence despite the risk of jail terms, etc. Consider also that it is currently illegal everywhere in Africa to shoot an elephant WITHOUT a hunting permit. Furthermore, all ivory, skin, etc of an elephant killed with a valid hunting permit CANNOT be traded/sold and remains the property of the hunter who bought the license. These 2 regulations, in fact, equate to a "ban" on ivory. Yet elephants are still being poached illegally as a result of the black market demand. The demand for ivory will always exist. What would happen if the price for a pair of tusks to the poacher would go from $40 - $50 to say $5 or $10 as a result of a surplus in product caused by the legal trade in existing Gov ivory stocks? It would considerably reduce the incentive factor to the desparate poacher in the bush. Parallel to this, if one where to focus large amounts of money into poverty alleviation of rural communities allowing them to be able to better their annual income 4 or 5 fold, then the incentive for poaching elephant is practically annulled! The black market trade would eventually collapse as the steady (and renewable) supply of "legal ivory" from Gov stocks would keep retail prices of ivory low thereby inhibiting the numerous middle men in the ivory smuggling chain from competing and offering more money per tusk to the poachers. Economies of scale at work! Besides, if I was a Japanese and wanted an ivory stamp and I had the option to buy one illegally and face prosecution or a legal more expensive one, i would be a fool to not choose the latter!

This is a simplified version. The reality is much more complex and time consuming and takes into account all the other supportive measures such as benefitting communities from co-existance with wildlife to reduce the "burden" of wildlife in their eyes and so on.

"The ban of ivory trade in Kenya for the past several decades has NOT stopped the poaching pandemic of ivory. On the contrary, it has fueled it."

of course bwanamich - as there are still other countries which are allowed to sell there is a demand and no one can proove where the ivory comes from!

you can turn it any way around: before trade has been abandoned ALL OVER THER WORLD!!!! you won't stop poaching ALL OVER AFRICA!!!
it's pretty simple - and human