Internet company Yahoo has been accused of aiding in the slaughter of elephants by allowing the trade of ivory on its Japanese auction site. Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer and Yahoo Japan head Manabu Miyasaka to have been asked to urgently stop all ivory sales from sites/platforms in Japan and all other markets.
It’s estimated that more than 12 tones of elephant tusks and fashioned pieces of ivory were sold on the Yahoo Japan auctions site between 2012 and 2014. Yahoo Japan is a joint venture between Yahoo and SoftBank, a Japanese telecommunications company.
There are several thousand pieces of ivory for sale on the auction site at any one time. On Tuesday, prices ranged from $20 for a trinket to $60,000 for a five-tiered pagoda carved in ivory. Traffic, an anti-wildlife trafficking group, said in a report last year that most ivory products in Japan are sold as hanko – personal seals that are signifiers of status in the country.
Despite Amazon and Google both having banned the sale of ivory on their platforms, and renewed efforts by the US government to stamp out the illegal wildlife trade, conservation groups said they have made little headway with Yahoo’s Japanese operation in recent years.
A Yahoo spokeswoman said: “At Yahoo, we understand the concerns raised by this campaign and we in no way condone the sale of products made with ivory obtained from any animal at risk of extinction. “Yahoo does not accept ads for ivory under our existing policies. Yahoo is an investor in Yahoo Japan and does not have controlling ownership.”
Yahoo owns 35.5% of Yahoo Japan; telecoms firm SoftBank is the largest shareholder, with 36.4%. While Yahoo’s US-based internet business has struggled in recent years, its Asian holdings, including Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, are considered highly valuable.
Yahoo Japan came under fire by the UK’s Environmental Investigation Agency in April 2015 for its sale of whale and dolphin meat, which was found to contain unsafe levels of mercury. The company is Japan’s only online retailer that continues to sell whale and dolphin products.
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