"Any postings of products banned by CITES are prohibited on our sites, and we will take them down as soon as we become aware [if our own filtering systems happened to miss them]," Erisman told National Geographic News in an email.
But Joyce Wu, in TRAFFIC's East Asia office in Taipei, said the companies need to do more.
"The major Web site companies should be more proactive and take the responsibility for the products sold on their Web site," Wu said.
Mother, or Horse?
IFAW's Gabriel noted that the two most popular wildlife products traded online in China are elephant ivory and items made from tiger bone.
Ivory products include decorative and religious-themed carved figurines, chopsticks, and jewelry. They are sold among collectors, who are mostly white-collar and well educated, Gabriel said.
Tiger bone, which has been banned in China for the past 15 years, has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat rheumatism.
Some manufacturers still produce tiger-bone wine and claim that it has magical powers and benefits for the skin.
The market for tiger-bone products generally consists of lower-income people in rural areas who shop at local vendors, though a small market for tiger-bone products exists online, Gabriel noted.
Rhino horn, tortoise shell, and antelope horn are also banned from being traded online.
One of the key challenges to policing online trade in illegal products, the conservationists note, is Chinese vendors' ability to tweak the language to manipulate descriptions of their products.
"In other languages it might be difficult, but Chinese is tonal, and if you change the tone it could be a different word," Gabriel said.
For example, the word "ma" has four different meanings in Chinese depending on the tone and the character used. In one tone, it means "horse" and in another tone it means "mother."
(Related news: "Genes May Influence Language Learning, Study Suggests" [May 29, 2007].)
This feature of the language allows vendors to advertise in a kind of code, using different characters to imply a different pronunciation of words and disguise animal products.
IFAW therefore supplies Chinese law enforcement with identification manuals so they will recognize illegal products when they see them in markets or online.
Burden of Proof
Awareness of the illegal nature of the products and their impact on threatened wildlife populations is on the rise in China, according to Gabriel.
But recent IFAW polls, still unpublished, show that most people in China, for example, do not know that elephants must be killed to obtain ivory. (See related photos of elephants massacred in Chad for their tusks. Warning: graphic images.)
And even if authorities find a suspect product, they have to prove to the courts that it was obtained illegally, which "makes it ineffective and holds up the process," Gabriel said.
In the United States the Endangered Species Act makes it illegal just to advertise sales of protected species, much less be in possession of a banned product, said Sandra Cleva, spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Gabriel said she would like to see a similar policy enacted in China. Until then, she noted, authorities can tell sites like Taobao to remove postings, but will still have trouble prosecuting the individuals who sell illegal items.
Meanwhile, other wildlife advocacy organizations say that China's online trade in animal products is relatively rare and that most illegal transactions still take place in physical markets.
"Multiple issues affect this, from the credibility of and trust in online trading through to the fact that much [animal product] trade is still conducted by people with no day-to-day access to the Internet or knowledge of it," said Steve Trent, president of the international animal welfare group WildAid.
Currently the United States is the top destination for illegal wildlife products bought on U.S. and international auction sites, the USFWS's Cleva noted.
(Related news: "Wildlife Smuggling Boom Plaguing L.A., Authorities Say" [July 26, 2007].)
But China had 210 million Internet users in 2007, according to the China Internet Networks Information Center, and will surpass the United States' 215 million users in 2008.
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