China's Internet companies join wildlife trade battle

HANGZHOU - Chinese Internet companies will begin to stop the online trading of wildlife and wildlife products from Friday.

At a seminar in Hangzhou City in east China's Zhejiang Province, representatives of nine well known companies, including Alibaba and Tencent, promised not to provide any opportunities for promotion and trading of wildlife and related products on their platforms.

The companies called on the public to boycott wildlife products to protect rare species.

The world's wildlife is increasingly threatened by illegal trading. Trading online has made such activities easier to execute and easier to conceal, said an official overseeing import and export of rare species.

An investigation in eight Chinese cities by the wild life trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, found 3,300 elephant tusks and 330 stores selling illegal ivory.

Dealers often use instant messaging services and online threads to spread their messages, making enforcement of the law all the more difficult, according to International Fund for Animal Welfare.

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