Washington. Just three major criminal groups smuggle the vast majority of elephant tusks out of Africa, according to a new study.
Investigators used DNA analysis of the seized tusks and evidence such as financial and phone records, license plates and shipping documents to map trafficking operations on the mainland and better understand who was behind the crimes. The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
“When you have the genetic analysis and other data, you can finally start to understand the illicit supply chain; that is absolutely key to countering these networks,” said Louise Shelley, who researches illegal trade at George Mason University and was not involved in the research.
Study co-author Samuel Wasser hopes the findings will help law enforcement officials identify the leaders of these networks rather than low-level poachers who are easily replaced by criminal organizations.
“If you can stop the trade where the ivory is consolidated and exported, those are really the key players,” added Wasser, who co-directs the Center for Environmental Forensic Sciences at the University of Washington.
Africa’s elephant population is rapidly declining. From around 5 million of them a century ago to 1.3 million in 1979, the total number in Africa is now estimated at about 415,000.
A 1989 ban on the international trade in ivory has not stopped the decline. Each year, approximately 1.1 million pounds (500 metric tons) of poached elephant tusks are shipped from Africa, mostly to Asia.
Over the past two decades, Wasser has obsessed over a few key questions: “Where is most of the ivory mined? Who moves it? And how many people are there?
He works with wildlife authorities in Kenya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and elsewhere, who contact him after intercepting shipments of ivory. He flies to countries to take small samples of tusks for DNA analysis. He has now amassed the canines of more than 4,300 elephants illegally sold out of Africa between 1995 and the present.
“That’s an amazing and remarkable set of data,” said Robert Pringle, a biologist at Princeton University, who was not involved in the study. With such data, “it is possible to detect connections and make strong inferences.”
“Tackling these networks is a great example of how genetics can be used for conservation purposes,” said Brian Arnold, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University who was not involved in the research.
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