China News Service, Beijing, February 15 (Reporter Sun Zifa) Springer Nature's professional academic journal "Nature-Human Behavior" recently published a genetics paper, in which researchers reported the use of more than 4,000 African roots Elephant ivory DNA identifies networks that illicitly traffic ivory out of Africa.
Understanding the links between ivory seizures could enhance the prosecution of suspects and ensure they are held accountable for all crimes committed, the paper says.
The illegal ivory trade threatens dwindling elephant populations, but the trade continues.
Ivory seizures (large shipments of ivory seized by official agencies) can provide information to help law enforcement understand the actions of illicit traffickers.
Past work has found tusks from the same elephant in different seizures, finding associations between seizures.
Corresponding author of the paper, Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington, and colleagues used DNA from 4,320 African savannah and African forest elephant tusks to identify exact matches (two tusks from the same elephant). ) and close relative matching, the latter being much more common.
Their research found that most of the 49 large seizures (111 tons in total) shipped out of Africa from 2002-2019 contained repeated poaching of the same elephant population, and that most of these crimes may be behind some large and intrinsically related networks. .
Analysis of the DNA data also revealed the strategic movement of this network between African ports.
The authors conclude that the findings have important implications for the prosecution of crimes.
With new evidence of genetic data, suspects arrested on the basis of a single seizure of ivory could be prosecuted for multiple related shipments, making criminals more severely punished for their crimes.
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