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Cambodian law enforcement officials took a lead from investigators at the US Department of Homeland Security. At the freight terminal in Phnom Penh, a cargo container allegedly carrying legally harvested wood from an African country has been emptied for inspection. Authorities opened the large logs and discovered more than a ton of illegal elephant ivory and other animal parts hidden in paraffin in the carved wood.
This shipment, salvaged nearly five years ago, was just a fraction of the 500 tons of raw ivory shipped annually from Africa to illegal markets in China and Southeast Asia.
Nothing can bring back elephants killed for their tusks. But a genetic research technique could help turn the tide against illegal elephant parts and other wildlife herds, such as family research, the group in Phnom Penh. Researchers detailed In the journal Nature Human Behavior On Monday, they provided details on how they used the tool to connect hundreds of individual teeth salvaged from dozens of large illegal ivory shipments, and how and where global criminal networks operate.
While this technique has only recently been used in human criminal cases, this is the first time it has been applied to animals and global environmental crimes, said Sam Wasser, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington and author of the paper.
John Brown III, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations and author of the article, Dr. He said Wasser’s team’s approach has helped wildlife trade researchers around the world “see the links and identify the larger network.”
He added that analyzing a pattern over time is much more valuable than investigating a single crime alone. “Connecting the dots is a huge challenge when researched on a one-off basis,” said Mr Brown. Also, tying a smuggler to multiple ivory shipments can help prosecutors build stronger cases and lead to tougher penalties.
About 50,000 African elephants are killed each year, threatening the future of the continent’s elephant populations. Poachers in African countries often sell ivory to middlemen, who in turn sell it to large export groups, i.e. people who specialize in transporting illegal goods.
These groups rely on offshore container ships to transport their contraband cargo. Given the huge volume of maritime trade – around 11 billion tons per year – the content is difficult and expensive to control.
Dr. Wasser’s team set out to solve this problem by adapting the tools used in forensics. Investigators sometimes use family search. Finding a perpetrator by identifying possible relatives in a DNA database. It led to the conviction of Joseph James DeAngelo, who is known as one of the most famous cases using this method. Golden State Killer.
In the study, the researchers sampled 4,320 teeth from savanna and forest elephants. Of the 49 large illegal ivory shipments seized by authorities between 2002 and 2019.
Wasser’s lab at the University of Washington had developed methods for associating ivory with the genetic signatures of certain animals by modifying a tool previously used to extract DNA from human teeth. When researchers reach a pile of confiscated ivory, they must be strategic about which teeth to sample.
Dr. “We can have 2,000 teeth and only get 200 samples per seizure because that’s expensive,” Wasser said. It costs about $200 to sample each female.
The team considers several factors to provide a geographically representative sample and to select unique teeth. Later scientists, Dr. Targeting a DNA-rich layer to be analyzed in Wasser’s Seattle lab, they cut a small square—about two inches long and half an inch thick—from the base of each tooth.
In the current study, the team found around 600 genetically matched teeth, most from close relatives of elephants (parent, cub, or full or half siblings) among the captured loads. These genetic matches allow law enforcement to link together physical evidence from separate investigations, such as cell phone records and bills of lading from ports of departure, to identify criminals.
Dr. “We can understand a lot more about how interconnected international criminal organizations are, how they work, and how they have evolved over time,” Wasser said.
The paper shows a repeating pattern of the 17-year-old tusks of the same elephant families moving in separate vessels from their shared African ports. Combining genetic and physical evidence, the team mapped ports used for smuggling, countries where elephants were poached, and links between shipments. The results show that the same large trafficking cartels have been operating for decades and still obtain ivory from the same places.
However, the research also revealed that cartels have shifted their export operations to less conspicuous countries to avoid being caught. Over a 17-year period, smuggling activities moved from the poaching spot of Tanzania to nearby Kenya, then to Uganda, a landlocked country where the ivory was packed in containers and taken by road or rail to the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
After 2015, export activity increased in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. Dr. “We saw that the DRC is the next export hotspot,” Wasser said.
This research was published in Edmonds, Wash. two Congolese wildlife smugglers. They face more than 20 years in prison.
Dr. “We have the opportunity to completely eliminate the big guys,” Wasser said, adding that stopping the transit of ivory is “the biggest impact you can have in eliminating and disrupting trade.”
Dr. Wasser is building a large DNA database for the seized ivory. And it’s growing. Future confiscated ivory will be analyzed and added so that it can be linked to previous illegal activities.
“What we learned from elephants has pioneered a whole new field of research,” he said. This approach is applied in the illegal timber trade as well as the pangolins, the world’s most hunted mammal.
Leaders of criminal groups that trade ivory and pangolin are also believed to be involved in drug, weapons and human trafficking. In the future, researchers using this evidence hope that as a result of the genetic inheritance of poached African elephants, other animals can be saved and organized crime can be reduced.
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