Alexey,
African hornbills are "farmers of the forests": these big,
iconic birds with huge beaks play a crucial role as seed dispersers
in the forests they inhabit. But their numbers in the wild are
plummeting as they’re being hunted for trade, dead or alive.
For years, online platforms like eBay, Etsy and Facebook,
despite promoting policies that ban the sale of wildlife, have
profited off a completely unregulated trade: hundreds of listings
of ornaments made of hornbill skulls, casques and
feathers.
None of the 32 African hornbill species used to be protected
internationally — until now.
Just days ago, governments finally granted African hornbills
their first-ever international protection — a landmark
breakthrough that changes everything. Let’s use this momentum to
tell eBay, Etsy and Meta to immediately update their policies and
ban *all* hornbill products from their platforms NOW:
Etsy, eBay, Meta: Protect African hornbills – stop
selling hornbills and their products!
When East Asian hornbills were pushed to the brink by trade,
protection under the global wildlife trade agreement CITES helped
pull them back from extinction. But the so-called “free market”
did what it does best: it moved on – to Africa, and now these
spectacular and charismatic birds are disappearing from the forests
of East Africa.
A recent study showed that between 1999 and 2024, the U.S., which
ranks as one of the world’s largest wildlife importers, received
about 100 hornbills per year, all likely taken from the wild. And
while 100 birds a year might not sound huge, it’s disastrous for a
long-lived, slow-breeding species like hornbills.
And despite claiming to ban wildlife trafficking, eBay, Etsy and
Meta remain prime destinations for hornbill products. Loopholes let
sellers move skulls, ornaments, and other parts of the bird by
changing the labels, and the platforms look the other way.
We need to stop this before the African hornbills meet the same
fate as their East Asian counterparts. And the first step towards
their immediate protection has just happened: CITES listed them as
too endangered to be traded unregulated. Now we need to call on
the mega online platforms to update their policies immediately and
ban all hornbill products permanently from their sites. Add your
name to our call:
Etsy, eBay, Meta: Protect African hornbills – stop
selling hornbills and their products!
When the online trade in hornbills from the Philippines surged
and drove the species to near extinction, this community acted and
called on Facebook to shut down the trade. Let’s do it again for its
African counterpart before it’s too late.
