There is somewhere you can go to buy gum chewed by celebrities and people selling their own body parts: eBay. The Web site is a place to go for the weird, as well as for the everyday item.

Effective Jan. 1, 2009, though, eBay will be removing one item from its seemingly endless list of products: ivory, thanks to the efforts of a team of UW researchers and their methods in tracking illegally obtained ivory. A global ban of the expensive commodity will be issued on the Web site, a big step in combatting the global ivory trade.

“Due to the unique nature of eBay’s online global marketplace and the complexity surrounding the sale of ivory, we will be rolling out a complete ban of sale of ivory on eBay,” according to a statement made by eBay officials.

The change didn’t come about overnight.

UW researchers developed a method to track seized ivory back to its original source through DNA analysis. Because of this method, they also gained a better knowledge of exactly how many elephants were being killed, which brought to light the severity of the problem.

Sam Wasser, the lead researcher on the team, is thankful for the banning of ivory internationally as well as nationally on the site.

“Hopefully this will help the public see just how big of a problem this is,” he said.

Wasser, who is a biology professor as well as the director for the Center of Conservation Biology, got his start in wildlife biology as an undergraduate in college. Starting off with a desire to pursue wildlife veterinary medicine, a trip to Africa his sophomore year changed everything.

“I got what they call ‘Africa fever,’” he said. “After that, I knew I wanted to study wildlife biology.”

While working on a Ph.D. at the UW, which he completed in 1981, Wasser studied in East Africa, mostly in Tanzania, starting in 1979. At the time, the poaching of elephants for their ivory tusks was a major problem.

“I saw poachers all the time,” he said. “The problem of killing elephants for their tusks truly disgusted me. That’s a big part of the reason why I decided to start researching a method to be able to track just how many elephants were being killed for profit.”

The DNA analysis method that Wasser and his researchers used and continue to use to monitor the ivory trade took him 10 years to develop. In that time, Wasser saw the 1989 ivory ban go into effect.

Before the 1989 ban, the population of African elephants dropped from 1.3 million in 1979 to 600,000 in 1987. The decline

caused the African elephant to be put on the endangered species list, thus rendering the killing of elephants for their ivory illegal.

The current elephant population is estimated to be about 470,000. Wasser thinks that’s still artificially high.

“African elephant populations have been known to be notoriously high,” he said. “This is due in part to government inflation of population levels in different African countries.”

In 2005, though, Wasser said, the global ivory trade skyrocketed from what it had been in previous years, due in large part to a higher global demand.

“The amount of elephants killed that year was 38,000, which meant that about 250,000 kilos of ivory was smuggled,” he said.

Of the 250,000 kilos, customs was only able to seize about 10 percent, or 25,000 kilos. It was from the 25,000 kilos that researchers were able to figure out, using the DNA analysis of the tusks, that roughly more than eight percent of the elephant population is killed each year due to poaching.

“All this new data got people realizing that this problem was way more serious than anyone initially thought,” Wasser said.

Higher prices and a lack of prosecution for transporting and purchasing ivory were the likely culprits for the sudden demand for ivory in the last few years, he said.

“People call ivory ‘white gold’ because its value has more than quadrupled in the last couple of years,” he said. “Partner that with liberalized global trade laws and practically no prosecution of

offenders, and you have a huge illegal ivory trade problem.”

Adding eBay into the mix complicated things even further. The eight percent of elephants killed for their ivory didn’t include the ivory being sold on eBay. The site’s accessibility made the sales of ivory there almost impossible to monitor.

Wasser knew if his research could show that the ivory trade was a bigger problem than initially thought, things could be changed. He was right. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was able to initially get the European offices of eBay on board for the global ban.

The United States was a little harder. After the IFAW’s allegations regarding eBay’s illegal selling of wildlife products surfaced, the American offices decided to join the global ban of ivory and other wildlife products.

Wasser says that the best way as a citizen to help the ivory and wildlife product sales diminish is relatively simple.

“Absolutely do not buy any sort of wildlife product,” he said. “It’s hard for people to understand the damage done by buying wildlife products, so just don’t buy them.”

Another thing he recommends is spreading the word about the severity of the problem; many people are simply unaware of the gravity of the ivory and wildlife product trade market.

“Write letters to your local congressman,” he said. “Let them know what’s going on, and how it’s affecting everyone. Open up their minds to the truth.”

Reach reporter Stephanie Small at features@dailyuw.com.