Ericka Ceballos
Other projects
25 Jun 2009
Monitoring and Reduction of Illegal Internet Trade in Protected Animal Species in Ecuador
12 Aug 2010
Assessment of the E-Trade Scale on Capuchin Monkeys and Other Primates, in Latin America
Assess the scale and detect methods of the e-commerce of endangered fauna species in Mexico (endemic and alien), to achieve four main objectives:
Alert Interpol, proper enforcement authorities of Mexico and other countries of origin of the fauna specimens found, about the illegal e-commerce of exotic animals in websites, classified websites and exotic animal sites, to persuade them to take efficient measures to reduce/stop this problem.
Alert administrators/owners of classified websites, about their websites been used for the illegal trade of endangered wildlife, for them to monitor and introduce new user rules & check if rules introduced after our previous contacts.
Lobby with our report to help achieve important pro-conservation votes at the upcoming CITES CoP18, for the species found in this monitoring and other species.
Raise public awareness about problem of the e-commerce fauna species in Mexico and other countries where we formally monitor the WWW.
In the past 10 years thanks to the RSGF support, we have been able to formally monitor the e-commerce of: ivory in Latin America, Africa and Asia, primates in Latin America and CITES protected fauna species in Ecuador.
For this project, our team decided to focus in Mexico, as from our several formal monitorings we learned that not only the e-commerce is widely spread in this country, but also that literally you can find any possible animal species online for sale. For this reason, we decided to assess their trade, giving emphasis to the Great apes and large felines, but also to all other primates, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and arthropods.
This is a mega project, but the results which we get, will be used to lobby with the CITES enforcement authorities of the countries of origin of the alien animals species that we find and the Mexican authorities, to protect these species from the e-commerce one country at the time. As well we will alert the authorities about the websites that sell fauna specimens. CATCA EWS will also contact each website individually in the next years to come, to be sure that they finally ban their trade of protected fauna species.
We will also check for elephant ivory, to follow up to see which Latin American classified websites in Mexico have finally banned ivory and live primates (from our previous formal monitorings). This will allow us to assess if they have listened to us in the past and have introduced bans and new regulations, to alert the general public posting on their websites about issues regarding the issues surrounding selling and buying protected and endangered fauna online.