TRAFFIC Logo

 

Confiscated ivory  © WWF / Mike Goldwater

Teetering on the brinkJapan’s online ivory trade

Confiscated ivory © WWF / Mike Goldwater

i

Published 8 December 2020

Exemplary progress made by e-commerce companies in tackling Japan’s harmful ivory market

Tokyo, Japan, 8th December 2020—in a promising new report, Teetering on the Brink: Japans online ivory trade, TRAFFIC finds that trade in ivory has dropped by as much as 100% this year on Japan’s largest online ivory trading platform, Yahoo Japan. It’s a highly welcome development considering the dangerous state of the nation’s ivory market revealed in 2017, but this resolve must become nation-wide and reinforced by government actions if Japan is to put an end to its role in the international ivory trade.

Teetering on the Brink: Japan’s online ivory trade

Report author(s):
Ryoko Nishino, Tomomi Kitade

Publication date:
December 2020


Notes:

[1] The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an international agreement that aims to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. https://cites.org/ 

[2] Although not a major destination for illegal ivory, Japan has substantial private stocks remaining from large imports during the 1970s and 1980s. Not only are the records of these stocks incomplete making the legitimacy of their origin difficult to track accurately, large quantities of ivory continue to be bought up by tourists and exported (around 95% going to China), meaning Japan is fuelling trade outside the nation’s borders.

[3] The report is also available in Japanese