ebay's New Years resolution: help elephants

The Internet company's is teaming up with The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to

ban ivory by providing extensive data to eBay on the buying and selling of illegal wildlife species and products over the Web.

"IFAW is grateful to eBay for taking this important step forward for elephant conservation. By setting the bar with a global ban on ivory, eBay is proving to be an example for both governments and online dealers to also take a stand on one of today's most critical wildlife issues - Internet trade," said Barbara Cartwright, IFAW Campaigns Manager.

eBay's decision, made on the 20th of October, was announced in conjunction with the release of IFAW's investigative report, Killing with Keystrokes: An Investigation of the Illegal Wildlife Trade on the World Wide Web.

The report followed a three-month investigation that tracked more than 7,000 wildlife product listings on 183 Web sites in 11 countries and singled out eBay as the largest platform with their users responsible for almost two-thirds of the online wildlife trade worldwide.

"Ending the online trade in tusks of the world's largest land mammal couldn't come at a better time," continued Cartwright. "With a tonnage of ivory now entering the legal market following recent stockpile sales in southern Africa, online marketplaces are ripe with opportunity for illicit trade. Elephants are already an endangered species and we cannot afford - the elephants cannot afford - for this to be propagated any further."

With limited exceptions made by government entities, selling elephant ivory has been illegal since 1989. In the U.S., African and Asian elephants are protected under the Endangered Species Act and internationally, through the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

"With these findings and eBay's leadership, there is no doubt left that all Internet marketplaces need to take responsibility for their impact on endangered species by enacting and enforcing a ban on all online wildlife trade," said Cartwright.