The world’s leading e-commerce, technology and social media companies are joining forces with Google and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to render online platforms and apps inoperable for wildlife traffickers to trade in endangered species.
Today, 21 tech companies from North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa came together as the first-ever Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. As members of this coalition, tech companies pledge to work together to collectively reduce wildlife trafficking across platforms by 80% by 2020. In collaboration with WWF, TRAFFIC, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), each company will develop and implement policies and solutions to help end wildlife trafficking online.
“Bringing these industry giants together is the best shot at systematically closing the open web to wildlife traffickers,” said Crawford Allan, Senior Director of Wildlife Crime & TRAFFIC at WWF. “Criminals are making a killing from selling rare species and products made from their parts. Inconsistent policies and enforcement across the web invariably create a “whack-a-mole” effect, where ads may be removed from one site just to pop up somewhere else. These companies see the problem and are uniting to ensure an internet where traffickers have nowhere left to turn.”
