August 08, 2018, 11:36 AM 
If you are sitting in your ivory tower this past week, you might have missed a little drama regarding an online business which purportedly sells ivory jewellery.
Ivory Lane is a business that claimed to sell the "purest form of ivory, sourced from the natural environments of central Africa".
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It turns out that the whole saga is actually fake news.
Nearly a week after the launch of its Facebook page (July 31), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has announced that the stunt was meant to reveal the legislative loophole concerning the sale of ivory in Singapore.
In the press release, WWF revealed that it found over 40 shops in Singapore selling ivory products.
It also claimed it came across traders who revealed how easy it is to "smuggle ivory across the border undetected".
The sale of ivory in Singapore is legal if the ivory was obtained before the ivory import and export ban was enacted in 1990. The responsibility lies on the seller to prove that the ivory specimen dates back to before 1990.
That is expected to change soon.
Just to be clear, Ivory Lane is a legal business set up by WWF but you definitely cannot purchase any ivory jewellery from it.
Animals lovers turned up in full force online
In the meantime, the presence of Ivory Lane sparked a "heated public debate" according to WWF. it went on to say that it reached 250,000 people and gathered 65,000 reactions within the span of six days.
Videos like this above triggered responses from animals lovers:
This was taken by WWF to be indicative of Singaporeans' "overwhelming and strong response" towards local sale of ivory and our "zero tolerance" towards the illegal wildlife trade.
People divided over "fake news" revelation
Obviously some people are not going to take well to being lied to:
Others gave WWF credit for capturing people's attention with this stunt:
So, now what?
In accordance, WWF listed several recommendations to halt the ivory trade.
This includes clearer legislations, harsher punishment, increased intelligence funding, and regional cooperation in ASEAN to stop transboundary ivory trade.
Whether that leads to legislative change is another matter.
What we do know is that there's a bunch of angry people online, some made angrier still after being taken for a ride.
You can view the press release in full here.
Top images via Ivory Lane and Facebook. All comments via Facebook.
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