DNA fingerprints crack African Ivory-smuggling cases
Samples taken from seized elephant tusks link multiple shipments to cartels operating out of Africa. Information that they have gathered is already being used to solidify cases against smuggling kingpins, a Homeland security official said. Samuel Wasser, director of the University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology claims that, "Not only can we identify the geographic origins of the poached elephants and the number of populations represented in a seizure, but we can use the same genetic tools to link different seizures to the same underlying criminal networks".Poaching is helping endanger the African elephant population."Right now we're estimating that there are about 40,000 elephants being killed a year and there's only 400,000 left in Africa so that's one-tenth of the population a year," Wasser said.He also stated that there are thousands of rangers that have been killed while fighting wildlife traffickers,"These are dangerous people, no question about it," he said.
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This shocked me because I didn't expect Elephants to start going extinct and is still by the same reason of the cruelty of humans , more people need to start coming and help these poor animals- Alma Alvarado-Cabrera
ReplyDeleteIt is very sad that people are making other species go extinct just for replaceable materials like ivory. On the other hand, I think that it is great that our law enforcement is finally able to trace where these cartels are from and where they are shipping to, and maybe that DNA evidence will lead to arresting the major ringleaders in the smuggling cartels.
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