Pursuing the poachers
An international agreement in 1989 banned the sale of ivory between nations because of fears that dwindling elephant populations in places like Kenya might get hunted to extinction. But that didn't stop poachers from illegally hunting the giant mammals and selling their coveted tusks, leading to brisk black market sales. Now there's anew effort to crackdown on poachers--and a new if unorthodox tool to help law enforcement authorities track illegal ivory traders: elephant poo.
Recent findings show that dung contains DNA from cells sloughed off the digestive tract. Since elephants that live near each other share genetic similarities, scientists realized they could use genetic markers to trace confiscated ivory back to where the host elephant was killed. "We can see," says lead researcher Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington-Seattle, "where the poaching hot spots are and really beef up enforcement."
This forensic tool was developed amid renewed international concern over the apparently booming illegal trade. This week, African nations at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Bangkok are expected to adopt tough new controls on domestic ivory sales, which, unlike international sales, are currently unregulated.
Tom Milliken of TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade-monitoring network, says the proposed regulations would give "real teeth" to crackdown efforts. Plus, he says, countries like China and Thailand with elephant herds have also begun to clamp down on illegal sales.
Wasser's team is now working with law enforcement officials to analyze the biggest ivory seizure since the international ban took effect--6.5 tons confiscated in Singapore in 2002. The shipment originated in Zambia, which recently gave Wasser about 100 fecal samples. The more samples Wasser gets, the clearer the trail back to the poachers becomes. Most needed, he says: samples from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.
The map "is already good," Wasser says, "but if we had [samples from] these key locations, we could do way better." -Nell Boyce
This story appears in the October 18, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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