eBay | Supporting World Elephant Day
eBay stands with our partners in the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online in raising awareness and support against the illegal trade of ivory or elephant-related products.
By: Mike Carson, Senior Manager of Global Policy and Regulatory Management
In celebration of World Elephant Day, August 12th, eBay is raising awareness and support for actions that help conserve elephants by eliminating illegal trade in ivory and elephant-related products. Unfortunately, poachers kill about 20,000 elephants every single year for their tusks, which are then traded illegally both on and off line throughout the world.
eBay has taken a leadership role in fighting illegal online wildlife trafficking on our marketplace for over a decade, dating back to 2008 when we first introduced our global ban on ivory sales. Since then we have continued to foster relationships and collaborate with government agencies, NGOs, industry peers and members of the eBay community to help us enforce our Animal and Wildlife Products policy. As a concrete result of these efforts, we blocked or removed over 45,000 listings in 2017 that violate our policy.
And while we are proud of our efforts in this space, we understand more can be done to holistically address this issue beyond just the eBay marketplace. To that end, earlier this year we joined forces with some of the world’s largest e-commerce, technology and social media companies as part of the Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. This initiative was organized by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), TRAFFIC and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to create an industry-wide approach to reduce wildlife trafficking online by 80% by 2020.
Beyond the Global Coalition, as a partner of the US Wildlife Trafficking Alliance, we support the “Be Informed, Buy Informed” campaign to raise consumer awareness about illegal wildlife products. eBay also continues to support proposals by regulators and law enforcement to further restrict wildlife trafficking, including a recent submission to the Australian government supporting a ban on the sale of elephant ivory and rhino horn and by participating in the Cyber-enabled Wildlife Crime workshop in France co-organized by IFAW and Interpol.
Every day should be #WorldElephantDay until we end wildlife trafficking. When shopping on eBay, help us reach our goal by reporting any ivory items for removal.
