Animals & Money: eBay, ivory, and the animal trade

This week eBay announced it would stop selling ivory products -- even antiques. The idea is to make sure there's less of a viable market for ivory -- and help cut the demand that leads to more elephant killing.

The decision comes just before the International Fund for Animal Welfare issued a report Killing with Keystrokes that shows how illegal trade in animals and animal parts goes on right in the virtual public square -- online auctions.

IFAW looked at 183 publicly available websites in 11 countries for six weeks and turned up
7,111 online auctions for species that shouldn't be traded. The vast majority were for trade in endangered species, specifically elephant ivory, but also included live birds and some other animal products.