John,

African hornbills are "farmers of the forests": these big, iconic birds with huge beaks play a crucial role as seed dispersers in the forests they inhabit. But their numbers in the wild are plummeting as they’re being hunted for trade, dead or alive.

For years, online platforms like eBay, Etsy and Facebook, despite promoting policies that ban the sale of wildlife, have profited off a completely unregulated trade: hundreds of listings of ornaments made of hornbill skulls, casques and feathers. 

None of the 32 African hornbill species used to be protected internationally — until now.

Just days ago, governments finally granted African hornbills their first-ever international protection — a landmark breakthrough that changes everything. Let’s use this momentum to tell eBay, Etsy and Meta to immediately update their policies and ban *all* hornbill products from their platforms NOW:

Etsy, eBay, Meta: Protect African hornbills – stop selling hornbills and their products!

When East Asian hornbills were pushed to the brink by trade, protection under the global wildlife trade agreement CITES helped pull them back from extinction. But the so-called “free market” did what it does best: it moved on – to Africa, and now these spectacular and charismatic birds are disappearing from the forests of East Africa.

A recent study showed that between 1999 and 2024, the U.S., which ranks as one of the world’s largest wildlife importers, received about 100 hornbills per year, all likely taken from the wild. And while 100 birds a year might not sound huge, it’s disastrous for a long-lived, slow-breeding species like hornbills.

And despite claiming to ban wildlife trafficking, eBay, Etsy and Meta remain prime destinations for hornbill products. Loopholes let sellers move skulls, ornaments, and other parts of the bird by changing the labels, and the platforms look the other way.

We need to stop this before the African hornbills meet the same fate as their East Asian counterparts. And the first step towards their immediate protection has just happened: CITES listed them as too endangered to be traded unregulated. Now we need to call on the mega online platforms to update their policies immediately and ban all hornbill products permanently from their sites. Add your name to our call:

Etsy, eBay, Meta: Protect African hornbills – stop selling hornbills and their products!

When the online trade in hornbills from the Philippines surged and drove the species to near extinction, this community acted and called on Facebook to shut down the trade. Let’s do it again for its African counterpart before it’s too late.