Gadgets deployed in wildlife battle
AKARTA — From cutting-edge DNA bar coding to smartphone apps that can identify illegal wildlife sales, conservationists are turning to hi-tech tools in their battle against Indonesia’s animal traffickers.
Spread across more than 17,000 islands, the Southeast Asian nation’s dense tropical rain forests boast some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world, from scaly pangolins to the endangered orangutan.
But that enormous array of flora and fauna means Indonesia is also on the frontline of an illicit global trade estimated to be worth as much as $23 billion a year — a shadowy operation bringing some species to the brink of extinction.
To tackle the problem, conservationists have begun using a slew of new gadgets to protect the archipelago’s rare and threatened wildlife.
“Without a doubt (technology) is probably one of the largest resources that will help the good guys get the bad guys,” said Matthew Pritchett, from antitrafficking group Freeland Foundation.
“The criminals that are behind the illegal wildlife trade are large organized syndicates that are extremely sophisticated.”
To keep pace with these vast trafficking groups, activists are now deploying the kind of technology once reserved for combating drug cartels and crime lords.
Conservation group International Animal Rescue Indonesia, or IAR is examining crime scene evidence with the help of DNA bar coding — a taxonomic method that relies on short genetic sequences to identify species.
Tissue samples from confiscated animals can be cross-referenced with a database of stored genetic codes, helping to unambiguously differentiate between species and subspecies — not all of which may be endangered.
“If we have animals with a known origin and we have animals that appear, for example, in Jakarta, we can then compare the genetic samples,” Christine Rattel, IAR program adviser, told AFP.
“We can then track down the hunting hotspots and what the trading routes are.”
Despite a raft of laws aimed at protecting Indonesia’s wildlife, forest rangers and police are under-resourced and lack specialized scientific knowledge.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that law enforcement officers are not biologists,” Pritchett said.
“There might be some of them that specialize, but when it comes down to it we are talking about something like 25,000 to 30,000 species across the world that are protected from international trade.”