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MALI: DNA research is giving researchers a map of hot spots for poaching that can help law enforcement target resources to contain and shut down illegal slaughter of elephants.
With a marquee touting performances of “The Lion King,” a 25-ton rock crusher in New York’s Time Square pulverized one ton of confiscated elephant ivory Friday morning.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service, which held the event, will use the residue in a public-education campaign about the elephant poaching crisis. But to Samuel Wasser, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, these events represent destroying evidence that could be used to save elephants.
Confiscated tusks represent a treasure trove of DNA, which he uses as biochemical trail markers leading to specific areas – to within 180 miles or less – where poachers killed the elephants bearing the tusks.
