Google ads fuel in ivory demand

A conservation group claims that Google has something in common with illicit ivory traders in China and Thailand: It says the internet search giant is helping fuel a dramatic surge in ivory demand in Asia that is killing African elephants at record levels.

The Environmental Investigation Agency, a conservation advocacy group, said today that there are 10 000 ads on Google Japan’s shopping site that promote the sale of ivory.

About 80 percent of the ads are for “hanko”, small wood and ivory stamps widely used in Japan to affix signature seals to official documents. The rest are carvings and other small objects.

Hanko are used for everything from renting a house to opening a bank account. The stamps are legal and typically inlaid with ivory lettering.

The EIA said Japan’s hanko sales are a “major demand driver for elephant ivory (and) have contributed to the wide-scale resumption of elephant poaching across Africa.”

Google said: “Ads for products obtained from endangered or threatened species are not allowed on Google. As soon as we detect ads that violate our advertising policies, we remove them.”

Slaughtered

The EIA said it had written a letter to Google CEO, Larry Page, on February 22 urging the company to remove the ads because they violate Google’s own policies. It said Google had not responded to the letter or taken down the advertisements.

“While elephants are being mass slaughtered across Africa to produce ivory trinkets, it is shocking to discover that Google, with the massive resources it has at its disposal, is failing to enforce its own policies designed to help protect endangered elephants,” said Allan Thorton, the US-based president of the EIA.

Curbing the trade in “blood ivory” is at the top of the agenda of the 178-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, which is meeting in Bangkok this week to discuss how to protect the planet’s biodiversity by regulating the legal trade of flora and fauna and clamping down on smuggling.

About 70 years ago, up to five million elephants are believed to have roamed sub-Saharan Africa. Today, just several hundred thousand are left.

Over the last few years, as Asian economies have grown and demand for ivory has risen, the slaughter of elephants has reached its worst level in more than two decades. Last year alone, 32 000 elephants were killed in Africa, according to the Born Free Foundation, which says black-market ivory sells for around $1 300 (R11 777) a pound. Much of it ends up as tourist trinkets and carvings.

CITES banned the international ivory trade in 1989, but the move did not address domestic markets.

Google’s advertising policies state that Google “doesn’t allow the promotion of products obtained from endangered or threatened species”, including elephant tusks, rhino horns and products made from whales, sharks and dolphins.

Thorton said the policies were laudable “but sadly these are not being enforced and that’s devastating”.

Concerned internet shoppers have alleged that ivory is being sold on other sites as well, including eBay. Some objects now offered for more than $1 000 apiece are marketed as “ox-bone” or “faux ivory”.

Wildlife group, the UK-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, has said it had worked with eBay to help them enforce anti-ivory trading policies by showing them how their rules were being flouted and improving efforts to flag suspicious items.

In 2007, IFAW alleged that eBay was “one of the main channels through which trafficking in wildlife and wildlife products are conducted online”, but it has said the shopping site clamped down after IFAW shared research with them concerning illegal trading. – Sapa-AP

• Central Africa forest elephant crises