The wildlife detectives
Les braconneurs braconnés.
Sur le continent africain, des centaines de rhinocéros sont tués chaque année pour leurs cornes, revendues à prix d’or en Asie. Pour protéger ces animaux sauvages, des chercheurs misent aujourd’hui sur les méthodes de la police scientifique. Direction l’Afrique du Sud, où un fichier ADN semblable à celui du FBI permet de traquer les braconniers et de les mettre sous les verrous…
South African authorities long had eyes on Rogers Mukwena. They knew the former schoolteacher was wanted in Zimbabwe for poaching rhinoceroses and selling their horns, which can command hundreds of thousands of dollars.
2.He’d jumped bail and fled to northern Pretoria, but it was vexingly difficult to catch and prosecute him — until a scientist helped make the case against him with rhino DNA. His subsequent conviction resulted from a new tactic in wildlife preservation: The genetic fingerprinting methods that have been so successful in the criminal justice system are now being used to solve poaching crimes.
USING DNA FORENSICS
3.First, researchers in South Africa had to build a large database of genetic samples drawn from African rhinoceroses. The DNA would be used to match a carcass to a particular horn discovered on a suspected poacher or trafficker, or to rhinoceros blood on his clothes, knives or axes.
4.To make that possible, Dr. Cindy Harper, a veterinarian at the University of Pretoria, and her colleagues have taught park rangers how to retrieve blood, tissue or hair samples from every rhinoceros that is killed, dehorned or moved. The rangers have learned forensic crime-scene principles. Harper’s lab performs the analysis and stores DNA fingerprints. The scientists’ database, which they call Rhodis, is modeled after Codis, the FBI system used to link the DNA of suspects to evidence at a crime scene.
A POACHING SCENE IS A CRIME SCENE
5.The approach is promising, said Crawford Allan, senior director of Traffic, which monitors illegal wildlife trade at the World Wildlife Fund. A poaching scene is a crime scene, he said: “If you want to get through
detection and investigation and prosecution, treat it as a crime scene and use forensics.”
6.Poaching has escalated exponentially, he noted. More than 7,000 rhinos have been killed in the past 10 years. [And] 20,000 to 30,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks. Their tusks and horns are trafficked through experienced criminal networks. “You really need sophisticated tools to help solve these crimes,” Allan said.
GOING AFTER TRAFFICKERS
7.The sale of ivory and rhino horns is hugely lucrative. Rhino horns may bring $60,000 or more per kilogram. A horn generally weighs a few kilograms, but a few have been as heavy as 10 kilograms, or about 22 pounds. “Pound for pound, a rhino horn is worth more than heroin or gold or platinum,” Allan said. And prosecutions are so rare that the risks for the traffickers are “very low.”
8. The poacher sells horns to a trafficker, who disguises them and ships them to destination countries, mainly Vietnam and China. Some horns are carved into jewelry while still in South Africa, which can make it extremely difficult to trace them.
9.Most horns are ground and used as medicine in Asia, believed to cure cancer, impotence — or, Allan said, “you name it.” More recently, people in Asia have begun wearing beads or bangles made from rhino horns thought to have curative powers and to be status symbols. Some horns are made into ceremonial cups.
10. A similar attempt to use DNA is led by Sam Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington. Wasser’s primary target is traffickers, not poachers. Even when poachers are caught and convicted, he said, “there are 10 more waiting in line to replace them.” But traffickers form the basis of the business that makes poaching profitable. “The analogy is, are you after a serial killer or a one-time murderer?” he asked. To catch a serial killer, Wasser added, authorities require “intelligence-based forensics to prevent future crimes.”
11.Harper also hopes to disrupt the criminal networks shipping contraband — in this case, rhino horns — to destination countries. So far, the rhino database has been used to convict hunters and traffickers in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Swaziland. But the group has not disrupted the criminal conglomerates at the top of the chain, she said.
12.The rhinoceros project began in 2010, when poaching was skyrocketing. Thirteen were poached in South Africa in 2007; more than 1,000 are now killed each year.
"A rhino horn is worth more than heroin or gold"