Statisticians Help Combat Increasing Illegal Ivory Trade

Statisticians Help Combat Increasing Illegal Ivory Trade

Statisticians from the University of Reading in partnership with TRAFFIC are helping in the global fight against the trade of illegal ivory, with a major revision of the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), a global monitoring system for tracking illegal ivory trade.

With elephant poaching levels the worst they have been in a decade, and recorded ivory seizures at their highest levels since 1989, the revised system will give accurate and up-to-date information on the illegal trade of ivory. This will be of huge benefit for international and national policy makers on elephant conservation and on illicit trade who have previously struggled to get reliable and timely data.

At the heart of the upgrade is an innovative new database that allows countries to report seizures of illegal ivory online, making data entry easier and more accurate than ever before.  It will also encourage more countries to report illegal ivory trade as they will be able to access statistical summaries of their data and review other seizures where their country is implicated.

TRAFFIC manages ETIS on behalf of Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It is one of two elephant monitoring systems under CITES, the other being the Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) system.

The revised online ETIS will be showcased today at the CITES Standing Committee currently taking place in Geneva. In attendance will be representatives from many of the CITES Parties who will use the revised system. They will witness the functionality and the effectiveness of the database by way of a demonstration, ahead of its launch in September 2012.

Bob Burn and Dr Fiona Underwood, statisticians from the University's Department of Mathematics and Statistics, have worked closely with TRAFFIC to develop the revised ETIS.

Dr Underwood, project leader, said: "We are very pleased that we are able to provide a solid statistical foundation to ETIS to ensure that it provides high quality and timely information on the illegal ivory trade at a crucial time for elephants."

Recording illegal ivory seizures is just one aspect of the revised monitoring system, which now has enhanced capability to provide indicators of hidden illegal activity.

Posted by George Daniels on Saturday July 28 2012, 11:18 AM EDT. Ref: ETIS. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0