Illegal wildlife traders are turning to the Internet to reach a wider customer base, circumvent laws and evade authorities, an animal rights activist told a conference yesterday.
Items such as rhinoceros horns, leopard pelts and even live tiger cubs are being hawked openly in online advertisements on public Web sites, said Grace Ge, Asian regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
The Internet offers anonymity for the seller as well as fast and untraceable sales, while inadequate legislation governing online companies ensures relative impunity, she said at a regional animal right conference held in Singapore.
“The Internet has facilitated the trading of wildlife, which is having a devastating effect on animals and ecosystems worldwide,” she said.
Through the Internet, traders are able to “circumvent rules, regulations and evade enforcement,” Ge told delegates to the Asia for Animals 2010 conference.
Citing an IFAW study on the illegal online wildlife trade in 2008, Ge said there was a “huge volume of wildlife and their products traded online on a daily basis.”
The research was conducted over a three-month period in 2008 in 11 countries including the US, China, Australia and several European countries. It found 7,122 online advertisements selling endangered species or products derived from their slaughter.
The US was a major culprit, with 70.5 percent of advertisements coming out of that country, followed by Britain and China with 7.7 percent and 7.6 percent respectively, the study showed.
Estimates of the value of final sales on these Web sites totaled more than US$457,000, but the actual amount was likely to be higher as most sites did not advertise their prices, the study said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS