“Selling ocelot fur coat” is a Google search term. People are still looking to buy one. And they are for sale on eBay. These are vintage ocelot coats. They were traded before bans were introduced. CITES and other bans are now in existence but I’d expect that trading in ocelot skins still takes place. There is still a demand. I think you’ll find the demand comes from the less well developed countries such as in Eastern Europe and beyond (no insult intended).
There are some almighty ethical dilemmas in how to deal with ocelot fur coats. What if you are left one by your granny? Do you wear it? No. Do you give it to a charity which sends it out to a cold, Eastern European country to keep people warm? No, not as far as I am concerned. Do you throw it away? Possibly, yes. I’d just keep it indefinitely as a reminder that ocelots were at one time mercilessly hunted in the tens of thousands for the skin on their backs.
Should eBay sell vintage ocelot fur coats? I don’t think they should. Their presence encourages the wearing of such garments.
US Customs figures for the 1960s tell us that ocelots were the main skins on the fur market at that time and that in 1970 there were 140,000 ocelot skins on the US market. Staggering and shocking.
Any wearing of a vintage ocelot fur coat will encourage someone to buy one and that may result, even in 2016, in the death of more ocelots at the hands of hunters and trappers.
Did you know that it takes an average of 12.9 ocelot skins to make a fur coat. That’s thirteens lives just to please a rich woman. In 2002 the coats cost $40,000.
Protection laws were introduced between 1967 and 1973.
Note: in 1989 the ocelot was moved to appendix I of CITES which prohibits all international commerce in skins and live animals.
Source: myself and Wild Cats of the World.
I agree with you Stephanie in many ways and I understand your sentiments. However, the one problem for me is that in wearing an ocelot coat you are inadvertently advertising the fact that the skin of an ocelot makes a nice, desirable coat. This undermines the conservation of the ocelot. It is illegal to kill ocelots for their coat nowadays but people still do it and this cat is still vulnerable to human exploitation. Its numbers are still declining in the US – down to 50 and it will be extinct in due course in the US. All wild cats are endangered by human population growth and activity and exploitation of the earth’s resources.