Wildlife crime cases can be solved with genetic forensics

Wildlife crime scenes rarely feature fingerprints or cameras. Instead, investigators are turning to bits of tissue, feathers, and soil-stained knives that hide genetic clues linking poachers, poisoned bait, and endangered animals.

A study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem detailed a toolkit that pulls those clues together and makes them stick in court.

Dr. Gila Kahila Bar-Gal of the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine is leading the work, and her team’s methods are already changing how rangers collect evidence.

Wildlife crimes are often overlooked

Wildlife trafficking ranks among the five largest illicit trades worldwide, generating up to $23 billion each year. Its profits rival narcotics and arms, yet detection rates remain low.

Biodiversity loss accelerates when poachers target endangered species already stressed by habitat loss or climate change. The endangered mountain gazelle, for example, has fallen to roughly 5,000 animals in its last habitat in Israel.

Poisons add a second, silent threat. Forty-five percent of griffon vulture injuries or deaths documented in Israel from 2010 to 2021 were linked to carbamate or organophosphate toxins. 

Population surveys now count only about 230 wild birds, down from several hundred just two decades ago.

Because a single carcass can kill a flock of scavengers, every unsolved poisoning undermines years of conservation work.

Genetic clues at the crime scene

Traditional autopsies stop at cause of death. Wildlife forensics asks a tougher question: Who is responsible? The first layer uses mitochondrial DNA markers to name the endangered species even when the sample is degraded or mixed.

Kahila Bar-Gal’s team relies on two short gene fragments, 16S and CytB, to cross-check results and avoid false matches.

After species comes identity. The lab amplifies Short Tandem Repeats, tiny, highly variable stretches of nuclear DNA, to build an individual genetic profile.

A five-dye, 22-STR panel has shown it can spot just 10 percent of a target species in a mixed sample.

“Our protocols are designed to be accurate and practical, because saving a species often comes down to solving forensic cases,” said Kahila Bar-Gal.

Researchers run each profile against a local DNA library built from both wild and domestic animals.

Wildlife poachers caught through DNA

Case records released with the study read like a detective novel. Rangers once raided a desert camp after spotting fresh ibex horns.

Twenty-one blood-stained knives and shirts all pointed to Nubian ibex, not goats, ending the hunters’ main defense.

A second file describes gazelle poachers who let trained dogs do the killing. Swabs from each dog’s muzzle carried mountain-gazelle DNA, while dog hairs in the suspect’s pickup matched the animals seized onsite.

That chain of evidence supported criminal charges even though the carcass itself was never recovered.

Solving a vulture poisoning mystery

The most dramatic case involved seven griffon vultures that collapsed after feeding on a goat laced with pesticide. STR analysis proved the meat in a vulture’s crop came from the same goat carcass found nearby.

Although the herd owner escaped indictment – since the goat’s profile differed from his animals – the link let prosecutors treat the poisoning as an intentional wildlife crime rather than an accidental spill.

“When a vulture is found poisoned or a gazelle is killed out of season, you’re not just looking for a suspect, you’re often dealing with mixed evidence that may include multiple species, some protected, some not,” explained Kahila Bar-Gal.

Why local DNA libraries matter

Global databases such as GenBank hold millions of sequences, but many lack precise location data or quality control. Using the wrong reference, researchers can mistake a vulture feather from Galilee for one from Spain

Israel’s wildlife lab avoids that pitfall by curating voucher specimens from every region and by adding common livestock breeds.

The approach means rangers can tell a wild Nubian ibex from a feral hybrid and can rule out claims that confiscated meat came from someone’s goat.

Other countries have begun to copy the model, especially in Africa’s bushmeat hotspots and in Southeast Asian ports where reptile skins move through freezers by the ton.

Saving endangered species with science

Kahila Bar-Gal wants faster turnarounds. Portable sequencers that read long DNA fragments in the field could shave weeks off an investigation and let rangers link samples before suspects disappear.

Policy work matters too. INTERPOL estimates that wildlife crime funds organized networks that also traffic weapons and people. Convictions backed by genetic proof raise the risks for traffickers and can shift the cost-benefit calculus.

The study recommends expansion of livestock genetic surveys in poisoning hotspots, tighter controls on agricultural pesticides, and forensic training for customs agents.

Those steps will not restore every lost vulture, but they can keep future carcasses from becoming lethal bait.

Wildlife crimes once hinged on eyewitnesses willing to testify. Today, molecules tell the story. Each cell recovered from a knife blade or scavenged bone now speaks for endangered species that cannot.

The study is published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

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