Spotting trouble (Image:Jason Edwards/National Geographic Creative)

GOING, going, gone! Adverts on Russian websites offering endangered animals, including 54 tigers and 13 orang-utans, are among almost 9500 online ads found in 16 countries over a six-week period earlier this year. The ads promoted more than 33,000 animal products, and 54 per cent of them were for live animals.

“If we could find that in just six weeks, you have to have serious concerns about what’s going on constantly,” says Tania McCrea-Steele of the International Fund for Animal Welfare group, and lead investigator of the study released on 25 November.

More than half the total adverts – 56 per cent – were from China, which also dominates ivory sales, with 1662 ads for ivory or suspected ivory.


Chinese sites included 164 rhino horn ads, even as the South African government published figures this week showing that rhino poaching has reached record levels, with 1020 rhinos poached so far this year, 16 more already than the previous record toll of 1004 in 2013.

McCrea-Steele says that some trade in endangered and live species and their products is allowed through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, but cautions that it is impossible to tell which adverts are legal. She applauded major web companies including eBay and the Chinese giants Alibaba and Taobao for doing what they could to ban illegal wildlife adverts. But she says that traders are now switching to social media, which is harder to police.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Trafficking rife online”