The groundbreaking technique is used to approximate the geographic origin of illegal tusks—information that can be critical in identifying poaching hot spots
More recently though, Wasser has turned his attention to a larger target: the powerful criminal organizations that direct the ivory trade. on February 14, Wasser and his colleagues demonstrate how a relatively new way of working with DNA—called familial matching—can reveal far more detailed information about links among poached elephants.
Now, using familial matching, Wasser can sequence the DNA of a single tusk and compare it to the DNA of all the elephants in his database, which reaches back to 2002. Instead of searching for a single perfect match, he can identify any close family members whose DNA is in the database. For anyone bent on crushing a trafficking syndicate, the technique is a significant leap forward.
Maps made with DNA from four Malaysia seizures, two Angola seizures, and the Singapore seizure collectively indicate that since 2015, poaching hot spots have been shifting from Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique into the Kavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area of southern Africa, where 230,000 of Africa’s remaining 400,000 elephants live.