Coalition Celebrates 5 Years

Just days after World Wildlife Day, with a theme of Partnerships for Wildlife Conservation, the Coalition celebrates its five-year anniversary. Growing from 21 partners in 2018 to 47 today, companies in the Coalition blocked or removed more than 11.6 million listings for prohibited wildlife online from March 2018-September 2021. Hear from our partners at Deine Tierwelt, Huya, Mercado Libre, and Pinterest spotlighting some of their activities. More information about the Coalition’s progress can be viewed in the Winter Spotlight Series, 2021 Progress Update, and 2020 Progress Report.

Huya Celebrates World Tiger Day

To mark Global Tiger Day, TRAFFIC helps Huya integrate wildlife conservation into their live streaming platform

This Global Tiger Day, TRAFFIC’s China Office supported Huya launch a series of public awareness-raising activities for protecting wild tigers. At an event attended by national celebrities and social media influencers, live streaming and physical exhibition helped highlight the need for wild tiger conservation and call on the public to pay more attention to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

Huya launched its campaign "Saving Wild Tigers Painting Solicitation" and received hundreds of creative submissions including illustrations, print engravings, and watercolour paintings to help draw attention to issues currently facing tigers. The participants included not only artists but also amateur volunteers, influencers, and their fans on Huya’s live streaming platform, showing the insight and understanding of different groups on wildlife conservation.

On 27th July, together with China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA), TRAFFIC, and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Huya held an art exhibition for selected works from "Saving Wild Tigers Painting Solicitation" and invited Huya’s famous influencer “Sha Yu Yo” as the ambassador for this art exhibition.

Huya will also launch its "Global Tiger Day Awareness Raising Live Streaming" event, featuring Huya’s famous influencer “Zhang Daxian” and domestic conservationists to spread the word on wild tigers conservation to Huya’s customers.

As a new member of the "Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online" last June, Huya has been exploring innovative approaches through live streaming events.

Huya has been exploring fundraising approaches and conservation awareness-building through its live streaming platform. For example, with the support of CWCA and TRAFFIC, Huya launched a live streaming campaign called “Protecting the King in the Forest” with traditional Chinese craftsmen on last year's Global Tiger Day. At the start of 2022, Huya launched the “Protect Our Home Planet” campaign to collaborate with key nature reserves to launch live streaming series, including Earth Day Live Streaming at Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park and Giant Panda National Park.

Huya has also organised activities for volunteers, including improving their capability on identifying illegal wildlife trade information online and spreading the word about wildlife conservation, reaching over 100,000 volunteers.

"As a leading game live streaming platform in China, Huya is ready to take advantage of our platform and link forces from different sectors to raise public awareness to protect our biodiversity and contribute to sustainable development.  In the future, Huya will continue to gather forces from all parties, encourage more people to participate in wildlife conservation and work together to protect our one shared home. " Zhan Xiaoyan, Vice President of the Public Affairs Department of Huya said.

“Since joining the Coalition, Huya has been working hard to build connections with platforms, influencers, customers, volunteers, and NGOs to help raise awareness of wildlife conservation. We hope that more domestic member companies of the Coalition will join Huya, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, and Douyin not only to focus on combatting illegal wildlife trade online but also to harness their platform’s influence to carry out a variety of biodiversity conservation activities and fulfill social responsibility.””

— Ling XU, Director of TRAFFIC's China Office

TikTok Shares Update

Helping to Protect wildlife on TikTok and Beyond

Republished from https://www.worldwildlife.org/blogs/sustainability-works/posts/helping-to-protect-wildlife-on-tiktok-and-beyond

Author:
Ayse Koçak, TikTok

At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. We're proud that over 1 billion people come to our platform each month in search of entertainment and an outlet to share what matters to them. We know that this would not be possible without our community's trust in our ability to maintain a safe and welcoming environment. We believe that everyone should be able to express themselves creatively and be entertained, but not at the expense of other forms of life.

Last year, TikTok joined the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, which was established in 2018 by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), TRAFFIC, and IFAW to bring together e-commerce, search, and social platforms across the world to reduce wildlife trafficking online. Since then, we've worked closely with WWF to enhance our policies, launch in-app safety features and tools, and encourage education around the life forms with which we share a planet. In doing so, we aim to continue our work to prevent harmful content and behavior, including wildlife trafficking, from proliferating on the platform.

Protecting against harmful content

At the heart of how we work to promote safety on TikTok are our Community Guidelines, which serve as our code of conduct, illuminating our vision for the platform through detailing the types of behavior and content we do not permit. Our guidelines expressly prohibit content that depicts or promotes the poaching or illegal trade of wildlife, and we offer a dedicated reporting category within the app for our community to flag this type of content to us. Further, our Advertising Policies do not allow the advertising of products derived from endangered, vulnerable or threatened animals or the sale of animals themselves.

Using the policies as a guide, our global safety team then works to enforce them. I'm proud to be part of the team tasked with keeping TikTok free from this type of violative content. My team is made up of experts from diverse backgrounds—spanning product, policy, compliance, and NGOs—all of whom are dedicated to achieving the highest standard of safety. We're grateful to get the opportunity to work with the Coalition and WWF, which help us strengthen our policies and improve our methods for enforcement and content removals. Under our partners' guidance, we have blocked around 400 keywords and hashtags related to wildlife trafficking. Though illegal wildlife trade content is not popular on TikTok, we must nevertheless take a proactive stance in identifying and removing harmful content.

Supporting education and conversation

However, content removals are only one part of a holistic safety approach. Empathetic interventions and education are also necessary. To encourage learning and understanding, we redirect searches so that when people try to find content that violates our policies around wildlife trafficking, they will see a message reminding them of our policies. Additionally, we've worked with WWF to introduce public service announcements that appear when people search for or click on specific wildlife-related hashtags or content, with the goal of encouraging our community to learn more about this deeply important area and directing them towards authoritative information.

A vibrant and growing community has formed on TikTok to create and share content on important topics including environmentalism, and we witness this conservation-focused content reach new audiences every day. We're proud of these creators—whose ranks include television networks, parks, veterinarians, marine biologists, activists, and more—who use TikTok to tell their stories, teach people about the importance of wildlife, and express their passion for protecting the environment and all the life that depend on it. It's no surprise that hashtags like #conservation and #wildlife have garnered over 12 billion views within the app.

Partnering for stronger impact

Inspired by our community, last year we celebrated World Sea Turtle Day, a day that recognizes the importance of protecting sea turtles. Activities such as poaching and commercial fishing have led to 6 of the 7 sea turtle species being threatened with extinction. The plight of the sea turtles and other animals serve as a reminder of why we are dedicated to continuing to learn from partners, like the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online and WWF, and evolving our methods for identifying and removing content and activity that could harm wildlife. And while there is no finish line when it comes to safety, we know that preventing wildlife trafficking online is critically important work we must continue because we want TikTok to play a positive role in the lives of those both on and off the platform.

Huya celebrates Global Tiger Day

The Chinese saying goes, “one mountain cannot tolerate two tigers,” but today, 33 traditional handcrafted tigers will appear on the Huya live streaming platform to recognize Global Tiger Day.

In 2010, The International Tiger Conservation Forum designated the 29th of July as Global Tiger Day to highlight the decline in global wild tiger populations. In the past 100 years, tiger populations have gone from one million strong to becoming an endangered species. Habitat loss, insufficient food, and illegal trade are the driving factors for this decline.

Currently, three subspecies, the Bali, Java, and Caspian tigers are extinct, and the South China tiger is functionally extinct. Sumatran and Malayan tigers are critically endangered, while Bengal, Siberian, and Indochinese tigers are endangered.

To mark Global Tiger Day 2021, TRAFFIC and the China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) have collaborated with Huya, a member of the Coalition To End Wildlife Trafficking Online, to launch a live streaming campaign called ‘Protecting the King in the Forest.’

Artisans will demonstrate three types of traditionally crafted ‘tigers’ through egg decorating, paper cutting, and cloth painting. The campaign calls on people to support tiger conservation by creating these tiger-themed ornaments – made from sustainable materials – rather than purchasing real tiger products. This will also help promote green transformation for the carving and collection industry and green collection among consumers in China.

A traditional craftsman Wang Qiwang, also a presenter on Huya, has created 11 delicately decorated tiger-themed eggs to mark each year since Global Tiger Day began. Huya’s official Weibo account will distribute several of Wang Qiwang’s decorated eggs to people actively participating in this campaign.

“Egg decorating is known as a ‘fragile art’, reflecting the situation that many endangered species such as wild tigers face. But at the same time, eggs can also symbolize life. I hope that through the art of egg decorating, I can call on everyone to support wildlife conservation.”

Wang Qiwang, traditional craftsman and presenter on Huya

Also invited to represent tigers through their traditional skills are Fu Zhao-e from Ningxia, renowned in China for her paper-cutting artistry and Guo Yulin, a famous cloth painter from Xi’an.

“Tiger conservation requires efforts from all different sectors. As a new member of the Coalition, Huya’s engagement in raising conservation awareness among its customers will greatly contribute to protecting tigers in the wild. TRAFFIC stands ready to support more private sectors to carry out campaigns to fulfil their corporate social responsibility.”

Ling XU, Director of TRAFFIC’s China office

The organizers hope that through the campaign, the public will pay more attention to the situation of wild tigers worldwide and make their contribution to Protecting the King in the Forest.

An Update from TikTok

Republished from https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/update-on-protect-wildlife-online. Visit TikTok’s newsroom page for full video features.

Ayse Koçak, Policy Manager, Illegal Activities & Regulated Goods

Earlier this year, we were thrilled to join the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. Established in 2018 by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), TRAFFIC and IFAW, the Coalition brings together e-commerce, search, and social platforms across the world to prevent wildlife trafficking online. Collaboration with partner organisations is critical when it comes to informing, shaping and strengthening our approach to safety, and today we would like to provide an update on how we're continuing our work to protect wildlife.

To raise awareness among our community about the dangers of trading endangered species online, we will soon introduce two Public Service Announcements (PSA) that will be visible to people whenever they search for specific wildlife-related content or hashtags. We use PSAs to inform our community about certain issues and redirect them towards authoritative content.

World Sea Turtle Day

We're announcing these updates to coincide with World Sea Turtle Day. Over the last two centuries these epic mariners have been pushed to the brink by human activity. Habitat-loss, poaching and commercial fishing have wrought havoc on these beautiful creatures - today, six of the seven species are threatened with extinction. Trading sea turtle species or their products is prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) - yet criminal exploitation and illegal trafficking persists. The internet has also brought new avenues for criminals to exploit and traffic wildlife, which is why we're working with the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online to introduce these changes.

Environmental champions and wildlife campaigners are working each day to save these magnificent animals. It's our hope that by implementing these changes, we can play our small part in ending their exploitation by criminal gangs and opportunists. TikTok is home to thousands of creators who are passionate about protecting the natural environment, celebrating the wildlife that we share this planet with, and sharing their stories with our community along the way.

To date, there has been over 360 million views of content labelled #Conservation and over 165 million views of specific #SeaTurtle content. Some of TikTok's top creators in this area include Marine Biologist @carissaandclimate and National Geographic's TV Vet Paul Ramos (@vetpaulramos).

Dr Paul Ramos, Veterinarian (@vetpaulramos) said:

"Wildlife around the world is under threat from human activity, including climate change, habitat loss and illegal trafficking. Saving our most beloved creatures is a complicated undertaking - but we can all help protect the natural world. I've seen how deeply the TikTok community cares about our planet and the creatures we share it with, and social media users have an important role to play in protecting wildlife online. I'm asking them to continue playing their part, whether that be reporting suspicious content, spreading awareness online or learning about the dangers of posing for photographs with exotic or endangered animals such as tigers or elephants."

Carissa Cabrera, Marine Biologist (@carissaandclimate) said:

"Our oceans and wildlife that call it home are under extreme pressure from the climate crisis, overfishing, and pollution. Illegal trafficking of wildlife, including their eggs and babies, are leading threats to survival for species like sea turtles. Throughout the world, even in my home of Hawai'i, wildlife trafficking is a growing problem. The internet can be a huge benefit for conservation efforts, but also brings new ways for traffickers to exploit our oceans. That's why it's so important that social media users report any suspicious content that they see online. I've witnessed the passion that the TikTok community has for the natural world, and I'm confident they will continue doing their part to protect our planet."

Our progress on tackling wildlife trafficking online

Our Community Guidelines make it clear that any content that depicts or promotes the poaching or illegal trade of wildlife is not allowed on our platform and will be removed when identified. Since joining the Coalition in March 2021, our teams have removed 73.5% of this kind of content before it received a single view. Our Advertising Policies also make it clear that we prohibit the advertising of products derived from protected animals or the sale of animals themselves.

Giavanna Grein, Senior Program Officer, TRAFFIC at WWF said:

“TikTok’s PSAs will help users better understand the link between wildlife content shared on the platform and the illegal wildlife trade, and empower them to help report suspicious content. Educating the public on this connection is an important step towards reducing wildlife trafficking across online platforms.”

We're excited to continue working with the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online to protect some of our planet's most endangered animals and keep our community safe from harm. We're confident that this work will help TikTok remain a platform that brings joy and inspires creativity.