The most inhumane threat: for the illegal wildlife trade, business is booming online

From ivory baubles and leopard coats to rare turtles and live bears, the online market for protected wildlife is booming, according to an International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) investigation released Wednesday.

Experts from the NGO spent six weeks last year combing the internet in four countries – Russia, France, Germany and Britain – for advertisements hawking endangered animals, whether dead or alive, in pieces or whole.

The haul was impressive: 11,772 individual articles or animals in 5,381 ads spread across 106 websites and social media platforms. Total asking-price value? Just shy of US$4 million (€3.2 million).

More than four-fifths of the items were live animals, including a large share of marine and freshwater turtles (45 per cent), birds (24 per cent) and mammals (5 per cent), the report said.

And while it is possible to sell and buy certain endangered species with permits under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), 80-90 per cent of the transactions proposed were probably illegal, said Celine Sissler-Bienvenu, IFAW’s director for France and francophone Africa.

“The internet has transformed the global economy, and illegal wildlife trade has transformed with it,” said Rikkert Reijnen, director for wildlife crime at the US-based NGO. “All those who profit form wildlife crime have moved into the online space.”