Wildlife Trade Meeting Endorses DNA Testing of Seized Ivory

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=wildlife-trade-meeting-en

If you go into a bar in Bangkok tonight, don’t be surprised if you find it full of celebrating conservationists.

An international meeting that takes place every three years to regulate trade in endangered animals and plants has bolstered protection for multiple species. Besides clamping down on trade in ivory and rhino horn, states party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) made the unprecedented step of granting protection to sharks and various species of tropical timber in final voting today.

Tom Milliken, who works for the wildlife-trade monitoring group TRAFFIC, which is headquartered in Cambridge, UK and has been heavily involved in the debates about elephant poaching, said, “I think this is one of the best COPs I’ve been to, and I’ve been to 14 of them.”

Before the conference, researchers across the world had warned of the dire state of African elephant populations, which are currently being decimated by rampant poaching. Many urged CITES to mandate forensic examination of large seizures of illegal ivory. Tusks’ DNA can be used to trace their origins, so that law enforcement can be directed to ‘hot spots’ of poaching. The ‘conference of the parties’ (COP) to the convention in Bangkok declared that such testing should be mandatory for large-scale seizures.