Web blamed for booming trade in endangered species
A burgeoning internet trade in illegal wildlife trafficking poses one of the biggest threats to endangered species, conservationists have warned at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Doha.
Research conducted by the International Fund for Animal Welfare found thousands of species and banned animal products for sale on the Web via on auction sites, classified ads and chatrooms.
They included lion cubs, wine made from tiger bones, polar bear pelts and rare exoric birds. But the biggest online market is in poached African ivory.
“The internet is becoming the dominant factor overall in the global trade in protected species,” said Paul Todd, a campaign manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “There will come a time when country to country trade of large shipments between big buyers and big sellers in different countries is a thing of the past.”
On Sunday delegates representing 175 countries at CITES voted to protect the Kaiser’s newt, an endangered salamander native to Iran which has been badly hit by international internet trading. But proposals to ban the trade in red and pink coral – which are sold over the Web and used in jewellery – were defeated.
In a statement last week, CITES Chief Enforcement Officer John Sellar said that the internet had a role to play in linking legitimate wildlife traders to consumers and said the challenge facing CITES was to regulate a system allowing consumers to determine whether what they are being offered is legal and traded sustainably.
“It is sometimes tempting to see the Internet as the root of all evil”, said Sellar. “Whilst it is undoubtedly being exploited by the criminal fraternity, and CITES has to find ways of responding to that, its considerable advantages must not be ignored, especially since they too can be exploited, but by the law enforcement community.”