By Loretta Shepherd | Communications Coordinator
A major victory was scored in the effort to end the online, ornamental trade in bats
Although the use of wildlife for ornaments is not new, the large-scale harvesting and fashioning of animals into curios is a growing phenomenon, exacerbated by e-commerce.
Together with other conservation scientists, we flagged concern about the conservation threat posed by online ornamental trade to painted woolly bats Kerivoula picta.
Investigations into the online trade of this species on USA's three biggest shopping websites: Amazon, eBay and Etsy (Coleman et al., 2024, European Journal of Wildlife Research, 70, 75) suggest that in 2022 alone, hundreds of K. picta were imported into the USA illegally.
Prior to the publication of that paper, these findings were communicated to the Center for Biological Diversity, and together with the Monitor Conservation Research Society, submitted a petition to add K. picta to the U.S. Endangered Species Act to raise border scrutiny and reduce USA imports of ornamental bats. Surrounding this, an active effort was made to publicise the petiton as well as the deceptive nature of the advertisements, which resulted in media coverage and heightened public awareness.
We are pleased to report that by mid-August 2024, eBay and Etsy had removed all bat listings from their platforms worldwide and in the USA, respectively, with both companies implementing concrete policies prohibiting bat trade.
This highlights the power of conservation communication.
What's next?
- Address supply chains in Southeast Asia
- Advocate for K. picta to be listed on CITES at the 2025 Conference of the Parties.
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