One of the largest black markets for animal parts is on Facebook

Log on to the world’s most popular social-media platform and type “tiger teeth” in the search bar.

Up pop photos of glistening white jaws torn from carcasses and various “closed groups” peddling parts of the great cats.

Blood money at the ready, one more click brings you a step closer to acquiring the illicit ivory. You’re automatically asked a series of simple questions about preferences. Show the most basic knowledge and you’re welcomed as a new “member.” Next come live digital conversations, more detailed vetting and, if you pass the tests, blood-drenched deals.

Welcome to Facebook, home to one of the largest black markets for the illegal buying and selling of the parts of slaughtered endangered animals, whistleblowers say.

From high society in New York to the badlands of Mexico, buyers are secretly scrambling to snap up the globe’s dwindling supply of elephant tusks, rhino horns, bear claws, tiger skins and other prized wildlife products in an annual trade estimated at $23 billion, according to the UN and Interpol.

And in New York, one of the largest markets for illegal ivory sales in the US, deals are moving from smoky back rooms to “closed” Facebook groups.

“What’s happening is really scary and a very worrying phenomena,” said Iris Ho, the wildlife campaigns manager at Humane Society International. “It is now possible that sellers and buyers in New York can go online, set up a closed or secret group on Facebook and proceed with their transactions.”

Last year, law enforcement nabbed the owners of Metropolitan Fine Arts and Antiques in Midtown for illegally selling some $4.5 million in ivory from more than a dozen slaughtered elephants. One pair of tusks, among 126 ivory items, was selling for $200,000.

While Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance wouldn’t say if Facebook played a role in that case, he said his office is “monitoring social-media channels for evidence of illegal sales and trafficking.”

“The amount of wildlife being traded on closed and secret groups on Facebook is horrifying,” said a rep for whistleblowing Washington law firm Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, which filed a federal complaint against Facebook last month. “We saw multiple products: rhino horn, bear claws, tiger skins, reptiles, and tons and tons of ivory. At a time when the world is losing 30,000 elephants a year to poachers, the amount of ivory sold on Facebook is particularly shocking.”




To read the full article, click on the story title