From: The Guardian - Associated Press
Environmental
Investigation Agency says ads fuel surge in ivory demand
that is killing African elephants at record rates
A woman looks at
two elephant tusks in a window of a jewelry shop in
Bangkok, Thailand, as the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species meeting continues. Photograph:
Barbara Walton/EPA
Google is helping to fuel a dramatic surge in ivory
demand in Asia that is killing African elephants at record
levels, a conservation group claimed on Tuesday.
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said
there are some 10,000 ads on Google Japan's shopping site
that promote the sale of ivory.
About 80% of the ads are for "hanko," small wooden
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 in an emailed response: "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."
The EIA said it had written a letter to Google chief
executive, Larry Page, on 22 February, 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 so-called "blood ivory" is at the
top of the agenda of the 178-nation Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites, that 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. MORE
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