Case Study: Tackling Online Environmental Violations with Web Crawling Technology

Overview

Oxylabs’ Project 4β partnered with Lithuania’s Environmental Protection Department under the Ministry of Environment through the "Create Lithuania"  program to tackle illegal classified ads linked to environmental violations. As part of this pro bono collaboration, Oxylabs developed a dedicated Ads-sites Web Crawler — a solution that now plays a key role in detecting and preventing environmental violations online.

We sat down with Giedrius Kadziauskas, Director of the Environmental Protection Department (EPD), to discuss the significance of this partnership, the challenges faced by the Department, and the results achieved since the solution's deployment.

The Environmental Monitoring Challenge

The EPD carries out a wide range of critical functions to safeguard Lithuania's natural ecosystems. Its responsibilities include preventing air, land, and water pollution, issuing permits, conducting company inspections, overseeing wildlife protection, and addressing various other environmental concerns. This broad scope of responsibilities creates a complex operational landscape, particularly when it comes to monitoring and identifying potential environmental violations in the digital space.

One of the department's most pressing challenges is detecting illegal activity on social networks and classified ad platforms, where violators often promote services or products that breach environmental laws. These violations not only undermine legal regulations but also pose significant social and environmental risks. 

Typical examples of such activities include: 

• Unlicensed waste disposal or transportation services, which may result in illegal dumping or burning of waste. These practices are especially harmful to the environment, as waste is often dumped in forests, meadows, or improperly burned or buried, causing severe damage to nature, wildlife, and posing a risk to human health.

• Unauthorized trade in protected wildlife species, including taxidermy specimens and live animals. These activities threaten biodiversity and contribute to the decline of rare and endangered species. 

Until recently, specialists at the EPD had to manually search for potentially illegal listings online – a time-consuming task made even more challenging by the growing volume of advertisements. Realizing the need for faster and more accurate data collection from public websites, the department began seeking a solution that would help them detect violations more efficiently and introduce a more technology-driven approach to environmental monitoring.

Driving Impact: Oxylabs’ Web Crawler in Action

In response to the growing challenge of tracking environmental violations online, the Oxylabs team developed a custom Ads-sites Web Crawler for the Environmental Protection Department. This tool automates monitoring classified ad platforms, where illicit offers often appear.

Integrated into the department's daily operations since July 2024, the solution enhances the monitoring of online activities by automatically detecting potentially illegal products and services, reducing the workload for officers and increasing operational efficiency.

By scanning approximately 400 ads per week, the crawler identifies potentially non-compliant listings for further review. This change has enabled officers to move from labor-intensive manual searches to focused, investigative action. Today, specialists spend only about 1 hour per week reviewing online ads, considerably reducing the time previously allocated to ad monitoring.

Since the solution integration, 15 investigations have been initiated, and four violations were confirmed, resulting in fines and confiscations. Confirmed cases include:

• September 9, 2024: A person, without having documents confirming the legal acquisition of animals and a permit to trade in protected wild animal species, offered to purchase a stuffed composition of a sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) and a pilaris thrush (Turdus pilaris). They were fined €700, and the illegal taxidermy items were confiscated.

• September 12, 2024: An individual attempted to sell a stuffed monkey (Primates) without having documents confirming the legal acquisition of animals and a Permit to Trade in Protected Species of Wild Animals. They were fined €800 (the specimen had already been sold and could not be confiscated).

• September 17, 2024: A person listed steppe tortoises (Testudo horsfieldii (Agrionemys horsfieldii)) for sale, without having a Permit to Trade in Protected Species of Wild Animals issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, resulting in a €30 fine. 

• February 3–5, 2025: Six illegal fishing nets were listed for sale online. Officers contacted the seller and carried out a controlled purchase of all the nets. The transaction was successful: 1 gill fishing net was taken from the seller, and since the seller didn't have a special permit to trade in fishing nets, he was held administratively liable under Article 293 of the Criminal Code. The person faced a fine of €540 to €1,200 and the confiscation of the fishing gear. 

The introduction of this technology has made monitoring more efficient, enabled faster enforcement actions, and allowed the department to act proactively. These confirmed cases demonstrate how data-driven tools can make a real-world impact in protecting the environment.

Public-Private Sector Collaboration: Driving Innovation and Impact

As technology evolves rapidly, government institutions often lack the resources or flexibility to adopt and apply these innovations at the same pace. That's where public-private partnerships become essential – bridging the gap with practical, high-impact solutions.