Yahoo Japan to end ivory sales - sources
28/08/2019 06:01
* Last major Japanese site to halt trade
* Japan allows domestic trade of pre-import ban ivory
* China banned ivory trading in 2017
By Sam Nussey and Yoshiyasu Shida
TOKYO, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Yahoo Japan Corp 4689.T plans to
end the sale of ivory on the country's biggest online auction
site, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on
Wednesday, finally joining competitors in a ban.
Yahoo Japan will end ivory trading, blamed by wildlife
campaigners for perpetuating an illegal international black
market, from Nov. 1, the sources said. They declined to be
identified as the information is not public.
Rival online auction sites Rakuten Inc 4755.T and Mercari
Inc 4385.T banned ivory sales two years ago, but Yahoo Japan
had continued to resist calls from campaigners, denying
suggestions the trade was a factor behind a sharp rise in
poaching on the African savannah in recent years.
Elephant tusks remain in demand in Japan, which allows the
domestic trading of ivory brought into the country before it
imposed an import ban in 1989, making it the world's largest
legal ivory market.
The tusks are used to make "hanko" name seals which, when
dipped in red ink and stamped on paper, are used like a
signature in a wide range of transactions from opening a bank
account to registering a marriage.
The two sources told Reuters Yahoo Japan, a consolidated
subsidiary of telco SoftBank Corp 9434.T , decided to halt
trading following reports that ivory being traded on Yahoo
Japan's platform was being on-sold to China.
China outlawed the trade in 2017, with increasingly strict
rules around the world another factor behind the decision, the
sources said.
A report by wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic last
year pointed to seizures of Japan-procured ivory being smuggled
into China.
The Japanese government last month began requiring domestic
traders to prove the age of tusks via carbon dating in a bid to
prevent illegal imports.
An estimated 100 African elephants are killed each day by
poachers seeking ivory, meat and body parts, leaving only
400,000 remaining, environmentalists estimate.
(Reporting by Sam Nussey and Yoshiyasu Shida; editing by Jane
Wardell)
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