eBay is committed to animal welfare and the protection of native, endangered, and threatened species, and we are proud to continue our cooperation with the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. Since 2017, eBay has blocked or removed almost 750,000 listings for prohibited wildlife products, while all eBay enforcement staff have been trained through the Coalition’s online learning program and in-person training.
World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and TRAFFIC launched the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online in 2018, with eBay and 20 other tech companies to standardize prohibited wildlife policies in the tech industry, train staff to better detect illicit wildlife products, enhance automated detection filters and educate and empower users to report suspicious listings. At the core of this effort is sharing learnings and best practices across company platforms to avoid duplication of effort and prevent wildlife traffickers from shifting activities from one platform to the next.
After three years, the Coalition has doubled its size (from 21 members in 2018 to 47 in 2021), member companies have blocked or reported more than 11.5 million posts and listings of illegal wildlife for sale, and more than 11,000 listings for illegal wildlife have been reported to company members through the Coalition’s citizen science Cyber Spotter program.
Upcoming priorities of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online are:
- Expanding geographic reach to additional platforms in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.
- Increase collaboration with law enforcement agencies to build out a coordinated approach to tackling organized criminal groups trading online.
- Strategically reaching more users through communications, raising awareness of the issue and helping to empower billions to report suspicious content around the world.
- Enhancing automated detection through the development of image repositories and robust training sets to advance block filters and reduce dependence on manual review from conservation partners
eBay is proud to be a member of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online and will continue to keep wildlife #OfflineAndInTheWild.