A wildlife body claimed that the online retail giant Amazon agreed to remove traps and snares from website on Saturday after it urged the portal to do on compassionate grounds.
Recently Wildlife SOS found snares, traps, wildlife specimens and wild animal products being sold on Amazon and started a petitions campaign requesting online giant to remove these items.
“As a result of these sustained efforts and petition launched by conservation organisation Wildlife SOS, the online retailing giant has finally sent a written confirmation to Wildlife SOS agreeing to remove all such items. They also confirmed that they had delisted close to 400 items from their website on the request of Wildlife SOS,” the body claimed in a statement.
Amazon website listed wildlife trophies such as rare sea shells, alligator heads, starfish, snake specimens, seahorses and tarantula spiders, scorpions found by Wildlife SOS among a host of others and cruel trapping equipment like snares and leg hold traps.
“The petition has since gathered over 9,000 signatures from animal lovers across the globe, even as the organization pleaded with Amazon to take down the products,” it said.
“Our efforts eventually paid off when two senior legal representatives from Amazon came to meet us at the Wildlife SOS headquarters in New Delhi and were showed the harsh truth about what snares and traps can do to maim, handicap and kill innocent wild animals”.
“We gave a brief presentation to Amazon officials about wildlife crime in the country and the devastating effect this has on our natural heritage. The legal team from Amazon were visibly moved when we showed them the picture of Rose bear cub and her missing leg that was torn off by a snare. They immediately agreed to begin taking down these items and have enlisted our help in identifying them,” Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife SOS said.