African forest elephants are at an even greater threat of extinction, according to a new study.
The study was released on Tuesday March 5 at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Bangkok. The study described how the internet has become a medium for selling illegal elephant tusks. Sales are fueled in large part by increased demand in Asia, where tusks are used as tourist items and decorations. China, along with Thailand and six other major ivory-trading nations, were notified that they would receive trade sanctions should they not buckle down on the tusk trade.
"The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend toward extinction - potentially within the next decade - of the forest elephant," Wildlife Conservations Society's Samantha Strindberg said.
In 2012, the International Fund for Animal Welfare discovered 17,847 ivory products across 13 Chinese websites. Trading also occurs in the U.S. and Europe, especially on sites like Ebay. Google Japan's shopping site was found on Tuesday to feature 10,000 ads endorsing ivory sales.
"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," says the Environmental Investigation Agency's U.S.-based president Allan Thorton.
Google responded by saying that ads promoting ivory sales are not allowed on its websites and that it removes such ads upon their discovery.
It is believed that around five million elephants lived in Africa 70 years ago, compared with only several hundred thousand today. Forest elephants have been particularly at risk because they roam the more lawless region of central Africa. Their tusks are also more sought after because they are longer, straighter and harder than those of other elephants.
"A rainforest without elephants is a barren place," Lee White head of the National Parks Service in Gabon, said. "They bring it to life, they create the trails and keep open the rainforest clearings other animals use; they disperse the seeds of many of the rainforest trees - elephants are forest gardeners at a vast scale."
The findings of the study are published in the journal "PLOS One."
