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"Despite 46 countries pledging to control the illegal ivory trade last year, elephant poaching is still occurring at an alarming rate. More than 20,000 elephants were killed for their tusks across Africa in 2014 (effectively unchanged from 2013), and reported ivory seizures are at their highest levels since 1989.

But a new study published in the journal Science on Thursday shows that DNA and data mapping might succeed where international governments have failed, helping to save African elephants and the ecosystems in which they play an important role.

University of Washington biologist Samuel Wasser, who coauthored the report with university colleagues and a wildlife crime expert at INTERPOL, developed a way to extract DNA from illegal ivory samples. By matching the DNA from 28 large ivory seizures with genetic signatures Wasser previously mapped from dung, tissue and hair of elephant populations across Africa, he was able to trace where these elephants were poached.

The data revealed that most of the ivory seized between 2006 and 2014 came from two major areas.

More than 85% of forest elephant ivory was traced to Central Africa's Tridom, a protected ecosystem across northeastern Gabon, northwestern Republic of Congo and southeastern Cameroon, as well as the adjacent reserve in southwestern Central African Republic.

Meanwhile, more than 85% of savanna elephant ivory was traced to East Africa, primarily within the Selous Game Reserve in southeastern Tanzania and the adjacent Niassa Game Reserve in northern Mozambique.

One of the largest single seizures Wasser and his team analyzed came from both hotspots, suggesting that there is a link between the major ivory dealers in each of these areas.

Africa is, of course, a vast continent, where poaching occurs in a number of areas. With this new information, however, there's potential to focus law enforcement within these hotspots, possibly making the control of the illegal ivory trade a less daunting, more tangible task.

"I hope the results will lead to a major crackdown of poaching in the two primary hotspots we identified," Wasser told Mashable in an email, "and [prompt] better strategies to deal with the corruption that allowed them to become hotspots."

The implications of such a crackdown are immense. Not only would it help protect vulnerable populations of African elephants — of which there are only an estimated 434,000 remaining, according to the Science study — but it would also help counter terrorists, who are increasingly involved in the ivory trade.

Even the White House has noted the role poaching plays in national security. In 2013, the Obama administration launched a wildlife crime task force to combat the industry "funding armed groups that fuel instability in countries around the globe."

Increasing law enforcement in these two hotspots can locate terrorist activity and, in turn, dry up those terrorists' sources of wealth.

But simply knowing where the poaching is happening won't stop it. It's up to the primary source countries to work with INTERPOL and other international organizations to bolster local law enforcement."

http://mashable.com/2015/06/18/elephant-ivory-poaching-study/

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