W.When the parrots were delivered to Alice Soares de Oliveira’s desk, they had no feathers and could barely open their eyes. Housed in a dirty cardboard box, the couple were barely a month old and showed signs of malnutrition.
The parrots, along with a pair of young toucans that arrived just under a month later, fell victim to wildlife traffickers. Snatched by poachers, perhaps from their mother’s nest, they were all advertised for sale on social media.
They were taken to Soares de Oliveira, veterinarian of the CeMaCAS, a wildlife conservation center in the forest on the outskirts of Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, after being rescued by police monitoring networks on platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.
Experts say social media has become a crucial tool for wildlife traffickers. An increasing number are using Facebook, for example, to advertise the sale of endangered animals or their by-products, often turning to messaging apps such as WhatsApp to complete the sale.
TO report published in october The Global Initiative Against Transnational and Organized Crime detected 477 advertisements for 18 protected species in Brazil and South Africa alone in a three-month period this year. Social media accounted for 78% of these.
Simone Haysom, head of environmental crime at the Global Initiative, says that after authorities cracked down on street markets, traders moved online. “Online spaces now provide the means for many of the world’s most endangered and most protected species to find consumers,” he says. “There are a lot of endangered species available to buy online, and it just shouldn’t be that easy.”
Crawford Allan, vice president of wildlife crime at the World Wildlife Fund, says the pandemic led to wildlife crime becoming “systematized” online. “Many of the open markets were closing,” he says. “People couldn’t move and a lot of things ended up online, and it’s become a norm.”
Social media companies face difficult circumstances when determining whether such ads are illegal, as laws regarding the sale of wild animals differ by jurisdiction and species. However, experts say technology companies need to do more to determine when posts are high risk.
The Global Initiative uses a combination of artificial intelligence techniques and human analysis to detect suspicious online ads. Its signaling system, part of a project called Eco-Solve, covers Brazil, South Africa and Thailand, and will soon expand to India, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.
Richard Scobey, chief executive of Traffic, an organization focused on wildlife trafficking, says social media advertising often allows sellers to “circumvent” legislation and sell items without telling buyers their origins.
“Companies need to allocate many more resources to regulate how users illegally trade wildlife parts and derivatives on their platforms,” he says. “Social media companies are working to combat illegal commerce on their platforms… But much more can be done.”
Some technology companies have taken steps to combat the problem. In 2020, Facebook introduced a label on some search terms, warning users about the dangers of wildlife trafficking, and Meta removed it. 7.6 million publications in 2023according to the Coalition Against Online Wildlife Trafficking.
The coalition is a voluntary body that includes most of the major social media companies in the United States and China.
In 2021, it said members had blocked or deleted 11.6 million posts.
WWF’s Allan was a founding member of the coalition and continues to oversee its work. He says tech companies have been receptive to activists’ attempts to force them to crack down on activity, but that layoffs in the industry have hit progress.
“As a conservation group, we always feel that people need to do more, but we also understand that they are dealing with terrorism, child safety and all the ills of the world that flow through their social media channels. “They have much bigger and scarier problems to deal with,” he adds.
“We believe that some companies have found balance. There are also companies that have not done so. “They’re not doing enough, or they’re on pause for some reason, and they need to step up and do more.”
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, says: “We do not allow activities related to the purchase, sale, raffle, gift, transfer or trade of protected and endangered species on our services.
“We use a combination of technology, reviews of our equipment and user reports to identify activities that violate our terms of service and will respond to valid requests from law enforcement.”
Wildlife trafficking threatens biodiversity and can cause the extinction of certain species. According to a 2023 article in Forensic Science InternationalApproximately 5,209 animal species are threatened or near-threatened due to “use and trade.”
Haysom says: “These species (which are advertised for sale online) are protected because they are endangered. “They are protected because the trade represents a real threat to their continued existence.”
In São Paulo, Soares de Oliveira sees a bright future for the birds in his care. CeMaCAS veterinarians care for hundreds of birds and animals at a time. He is confident that the parrots and toucans will make a full recovery and be released back into the wild.
“They are in the process of rehabilitation. They are still young and we are watching them. But I think that in three months they will be able to have a free life,” he says.
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