Elephant skin sales and illegal trade have grown across Southeast Asia, a new report released Monday, which is also World Elephant Day, says.
The organization Elephant Family investigated the Asian elephant skin trade from 2016 to 2018 for the report, an update from a 2018 one.
While there was a brief decline in online trades in Oct. 2018, when mentions of elephant skins were removed from online forums and the most active trading site was shut down, the report said that by the following month, “sites were up and running again and by May 2019 the number of subscribers to all sites dedicated to elephant skin had increased and numbers are still rising.”
