CATCA EWS will assess the level of the e-commerce of elephant ivory in 6 Latin American countries, which will include 4 small to medium countries and 2 large countries. We already started to do a preliminary research of the internet advertising services all over Latin America. With the results that we will obtain in this preliminary investigation, we will choose which countries will meet the criteria for this project.

As in the previous projects, we will take in consideration many factors to choose the countries to investigate that are quite diverse in demography, geographic area, ethnical background and economical development, to be able to get different results that will allow us to better assess and understand the e-commerce of elephant ivory in Latin America.

The investigation in the selected countries will be done in collaboration with the Animal Conservation and Welfare Foundation, which will made a surveys in 3 countries under the guidance of the CATCA EWS.

This will not be a random, informal e-trade assessment that is done in few days. We will continue to conduct a formal research, using a similar methodology as in all of our previous investigations on the e-trade of elephant ivory in three continents and of primates in Latin America. This means that we will continue to be meticulously detailed and checking every advertisement inside out, contacting the sellers to enquire more information about the specimens to assess the origin and legal status of the specimens offered, and collecting all the info to our database, to analyze and obtain a reliable quantitative and qualitative values.

The results of this extensive investigation will be elaborated and presented as a report (printed and also in a PDF file in our websites). This report will be delivered to the governments and media during the CITES CoP17, as well to the internet advertising services. We will keep trying to convince the companies that provide online advertising services to implement regulations, and to the countries authorities to introduce laws which would reduce the level of illegal trade in elephant ivory and other protected species, to make it easier to detect and prosecute.