Automatic detection of potentially illegal online sales of elephant ivory via data mining

In this work, we developed an automated system to detect potentially illegal elephant ivory items for sale on eBay. Two law enforcement experts, with specific knowledge of elephant ivory identification, manually classified items on sale in the Antiques section of eBay UK over an 8 week period. This set the “Gold Standard” that we aim to emulate using data-mining. We achieved close to 93% accuracy with less data than the experts, as we relied entirely on metadata, but did not employ item descriptions or associated images, thus proving the potential and generality of our approach. The reported accuracy may be improved with the addition of text mining techniques for the analysis of the item description, and by applying image classification for the detection of Schreger lines, indicative of elephant ivory. However, any solution relying on images or text description could not be employed on other wildlife illegal markets where pictures can be missing or misleading and text absent (e.g., Instagram). In our setting, we gave human experts all available information while only using minimal information for our analysis. Despite this, we succeeded at achieving a very high accuracy. This work is an important first step in speeding up the laborious, tedious and expensive task of expert discovery of illegal trade over the internet. It will also allow for faster reporting to law enforcement and better accountability. We hope this will also contribute to reducing poaching, by making this illegal trade harder and riskier for those involved

Code word usage in the online ivory trade across four European Union member states

Illegal wildlife trade is a rapidly evolving environmental crime that is expanding through e-commerce. Because of the nature of the internet, detection of online illegal wildlife and enforcement has proven to be difficult and time-consuming, often based on manual searches through the use of keywords. As a result of scrutiny, traders in elephant ivory now use code words to disguise the trade, thus adding an additional level of complexity. Here we look at the use of 19 code words and phrases associated with the online trade in elephant ivory items on eBay across four European Union (EU) member States. Results show that, in spite of eBay’s ban on ivory, elephant ivory is still being offered for sale across all four sites we searched (183 ivory items offered by 113 sellers during 18 January–5 February 2017). Beyond the violation of eBay’s Terms and Conditions, other potential illegalities included offers for sale across international borders without mention of CITES permit requirements, and the offer of ivory that may be considered 'unworked', which violates EU regulations. Code word usage was found to be consistent across all four EU countries. Although the rise of online wildlife trade is of concern, the growth of global markets may homogenize conventions within trading communities, such as in this case the code words used. Homogenization of conventions may therefore offer opportunities for tackling the illegal online trade in wildlife

An Assessment of Poaching and Wildlife Trafficking in the Garamba-Bili-Chinko Transboundary Landscape

An assessment of poaching and wildlife trafficking in the Garamba-Bili-Chinko transboundary landscape of the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Cong

A novel application of mark-recapture to examine behaviour associated with the online trade in elephant ivory

The illegal trade in elephant ivory is driving the unlawful killing of elephants such that populations are now suffering unsustainable reductions. The internet is increasingly being used as a platform to conduct illegal wildlife trade, including elephant ivory. As a globally accessible medium the internet is as highly attractive to those involved in the illegal trade as it is challenging to regulate. Characterising the online illegal wildlife (ivory) trade is complex, yet key to informing enforcement activities. We applied mark-recapture to investigate behaviour associated with the online trade in elephant ivory on eBay UK as a generalist online marketplace. Our results indicate that trade takes place via eBay UK, despite its policy prohibiting this, and that two distinct trading populations exist, characterised by the pattern of their ivory sales. We suggest these may represent a large number of occasional (or non-commercial) sellers and a smaller number of dedicated (or commercial) sellers. Directing resource towards reducing the volume of occasional sales, such as through education, would enable greater focus to be placed upon characterising the extent and value of the illegal, “commercial” online ivory trade. MRC has the potential to characterise the illegal trade in ivory and diverse wildlife commodities traded using various online platforms

Estimating the extent and structure of trade in horticultural orchids via social media

The wildlife trade is a lucrative industry involving thousands of animal and plant species. The increasing use of the internet for both legal and illegal wildlife trade is well documented, but there is evidence that trade may be emerging on new online technologies such as social media. Using the orchid trade as a case study, we conducted the first systematic survey of wildlife trade on an international social-media website. We focused on themed forums (groups), where people with similar interests can interact by uploading images or text (posts) that are visible to other group members. We used social-network analysis to examine the ties between 150 of these orchid-themed groups to determine the structure of the network. We found 4 communities of closely linked groups based around shared language. Most trade occurred in a community that consisted of English-speaking and Southeast Asian groups. In addition to the network analysis, we randomly sampled 30 groups from the whole network to assess the prevalence of trade in cultivated and wild plants. Of 55,805 posts recorded over 12 weeks, 8.9% contained plants for sale, and 22–46% of these posts pertained to wild-collected orchids. Although total numbers of posts about trade were relatively small, the large proportion of posts advertising wild orchids for sale supports calls for better monitoring of social media for trade in wild-collected plants

The availability of online elephant ivory

The ivory trade is an increasingly prominent form of wildlife crime, and due to technological advances in recent years, the internet has made ivory trading more accessible than ever before. This has created a drastic change in how crime operates and has consequently led to difficulties in identifying sales and penalization. Despite the UK Ivory Act banning the trade, and CITES protecting vulnerable elephant populations, the ivory trade still continues to threaten the species. Further research into the online availability of ivory is crucial in understanding the trade and behavioural response of consumers. This study aims to; understand the demand for ivory and the scale of consumerism in more detail, and to investigate the accessibility of the online ivory market. This involved exploring how popular ivory products are in UK marketplaces, and how easy it is to find and purchase ivory as a consumer. These questions are investigated through chapter 2 of this thesis, which involved a 17-week investigation of eBay UK by searching for 'netsuke' items to identify possible ivory products being sold. These were examined for Schreger lines to determine the authenticity of ivory items. Additionally, chapter 3 of this thesis investigates trade data using the search-cost ('shopping list') analysis method, which involves searching for a specific list of wildlife items online. The aim of this is to demonstrate a more time-effective way to gain trade data compared to traditional methods, especially given the scale of online trade. This follows the rationale that when searching for an item, a higher search time would correlate with less availability. The ivory market provides a particularly interesting case study to investigate the effectiveness of the search cost method due to the persistence of active ivory sellers despite the UK Ivory Ban and recent political interest in wildlife crime. For this study, we involved 24 participants who were given a 'shopping list' of both elephant items and non-elephant items and asked them to record how long it took to identify each item online. These 6 6 studies identified some key findings, where we can conclude the ivory trade is still prominent, with existing demand and accessibility to consumers. Over the 17-week study period of eBay investigation, we identified a total of 43 unique ivory items with 30% of products being sold to the consumer. 44% of these items were removed from the website, however, approximately a quarter had already been sold. This suggests an existing demand for ivory, in addition to inefficient policies presented by eBay to reduce these sales. This contradicts their 2009 policy that banned such sales on their marketplace, demonstrating the need for new and improved measures in this area. Additionally, easy accessibility of ivory was demonstrated through our search-cost analysis. Despite limited knowledge in this field prior to the study, participants had no reported problems identifying an ivory item, with an average search time of 4.13 minutes. Interestingly, our results also found no time difference between ivory and non-ivory items, contradicting certain results from the original study based on physical markets in China. This was a surprising result, which we have concluded could be due to three key possibilities; current deterrents are ineffective meaning ivory items are just as easy to identify as non-ivory items, the items we chose for the list are not popular on online marketplaces, and participants spent more time searching for items due to the risk of getting it wrong. These have presented certain amendments to the research which could be beneficial in any future replications of the study. From the results of this research, we believe the ivory market is still in demand on online marketplaces, with easy accessibility for consumers. We suggest research on a longer scale to investigate whether trends are increasing or decreasing with time. The search cost was an effective method of gaining trade data, but due to limited studies previously, more research is required. Future study is crucial in building on the results of this study, to understand online consumer response to effectively decrease availability and demand

The Corpus Expansion Toolkit: finding what we want on the web

This thesis presents the Corpus Expansion Toolkit (CET), a generally applicable toolkit that allows researchers to build domain-specific corpora from the web. The main purpose of the work presented in this thesis and the development of the CET is to provide a solution to discovering desired content on the web from possibly unknown locations or a poorly defined domain. Using an iterative process, the CET is able to solve the problem of discovering domain-specific online content and expand a corpus using only a very small number of example documents or characteristic phrases taken from the target domain. Using a human-in-the-loop strategy and a chain of discrete software components the CET also allows the concept of a domain to be iteratively defined using the very online resources used to expand the original corpus. The CET combines feature extraction, search, web crawling and machine learning methods to collected, store, filter and perform information extraction on collected documents. Using a small number of example ‘seed’ documents the CET is able to expand the original corpus by finding more relevant documents from the web and provide a number of tools to support their analysis. This thesis presents a case study-based methodology that introduces the various contributions and components of the CET through the discussion of five case studies covering a wide variety of domains and requirements that the CET has been applied. These case studies hope to illustrate three main use cases, listed below, where the CET is applicable: 1. Domain known – source known 2. Domain known – source unknown 3. Domain unknown – source unknown First, use cases where the sites for document collection are known and the topic of research is clearly defined. Second, instances where the topic of research is clearly defined but where to find relevant documents on the web is unknown. Third, the most extreme use case, where the domain is poorly defined or unknown to the researcher and the location of the information is also unknown. This thesis presents a solution that allows researchers to begin with very little information on a specific topic and iteratively build a clear conception of a domain and translate that to a computational system

Characterising the Extent of Illegal Online Trade in Wildlife Using Novel Approaches

The illegal, international trade in wildlife poses serious and pressing threats at a number of levels. Traded species are increasingly threatened with extinction and these harms extend to compromised biodiversity and ecosystem instability. Associated threats include biosecurity issues such as disease introduction (including zoonoses) and the ingress of alien species. There is acute awareness of both the critical need for enhanced understanding of the extent and nature of the illegal wildlife trade and how challenging it is to achieve this. The online trading environment presents a particular case where challenges are amplified since it is growing rapidly, diverse and complex to monitor and regulate. Mirroring patterns in conventional trade, the online environment is increasingly being used as a means to conduct legal and illegal wildlife trade. Its attractiveness for illegal trade is illustrated by recent experience where, in response to ivory trade bans, trade shifted from physical trading outlets to online media. The research focus of this thesis is to contribute towards addressing a key area of unmet need that underpins counter-illegal wildlife trade measures. Specifically, bridging an informational "gap" which the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has acknowledged under UN Resolution A/71/L.88 "Tackling Illicit Wildlife Trafficking" (2017). Under UN A/71/L.88 the UNGA has tasked the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) with collecting information on patterns and flows of illicit wildlife trafficking as a support to addressing the trade. The UNODC describes bridging the informational gap as essential to successful counter illegal wildlife trade measures. I translate this imperative to the fast-growing online environment for illegal wildlife trade where the lack of information is a compelling unmet need. I apply two approaches to researching illegal online wildlife trade and the behaviours associated with it. These are: a) "Measurement" (modelling) of online trade postings by application of two different mark recapture (MRC) models to downloaded encounter history data for the online ivory trade (Chapters 3 and 4) and b) "Asking" people who may be involved with illegal (online) wildlife trade to share this information through an online survey incorporating sensitive question models (Chapter 5). In my initial MRC study I build on prior research into online trade in CITES-listed species to evaluate population parameters associated with (illegal) online trade in elephant ivory within the UK. Online media operate "24/7" and, currently, no suitable technology exists to monitor and interrogate this trade continuously. MRC offers a resource-efficient means to monitor trade since it can be applied to estimate trading population parameters based on incomplete observation. I assess study outcomes to identify population parameter inferences and potential actions to address trade based on these. I indicate opportunities for MRC application to enhance understanding of the illegal, online trade in ivory and, potentially, other wildlife trade commodities. I then explore application of the complex, multi-parameter multi-state open robust design (MSORD) model to time-separated sets of encounter histories of online "ivory" trade items (UK trade). My intent is to examine the suitability of MSORD for modelling data from snap-shot online wildlife trade monitoring studies to derive maximum information and resource benefit from them. In this way, to build knowledge and understanding of the illegal online trade in ivory (and potentially other wildlife trade commodities). I shift focus to engage with people more directly to understand their involvement in illegal wildlife trade, preferred transaction routes i.e. face to face or online, and how this balance may be changing. I apply sensitive question models (including a novel model) and direct questioning to investigate potentially sensitive purchasing behaviours in a reptile keeper community, principally UK-based. I discuss study outcomes in terms of comparative model performance and consider significant results in the context of the reptile trade. Aspects particular to sensitive question model application are discussed and suggestions for future research made, informed by learnings from this study. Considered as a whole, the outcomes from this thesis have potential for application to increase knowledge and understanding of the illegal online trade in wildlife and contribute towards bridging the informational gap described. The MRC approaches applied may offer resource-sparing means to monitor online trade and better understand trading population parameters. This enhanced understanding could provide a basis for informed policy development and coordinated interventions ranging from educational, to law enforcement. Behavioural elements of trading populations (such as participation in illegal wildlife trade, sensitivities to it and preferred routes for purchasing items) may be further explored using sensitive question models. This research indicates that illegal, online wildlife trade is ongoing in the (mainly) UK trading populations I have assessed, despite initiatives and enforcement actions designed to address it. This leads me to consider the effectiveness of such initiatives, and factors that may influence this. I suggest that ensuring clear understanding of the extent and nature of trade being conducted, including the behaviours that underpin it, is essential to designing suitable interventions with an increased likelihood of success. I recommend further, coordinated research as indicated in this thesis as part of a wider initiative to deepen understanding of illegal (online) wildlife trade as a support to effective counter-measures and biodiversity conservation