DNA testing, gun-sniffing dogs help catch poachers

Poachers in western states have become technologically advanced over the past 30 years, and game wardens have had to do likewise in order to catch them, reports Sandra Chereb of The Associated Press. DNA has become critical in animal crime investigations. “It’s the same as a homicide investigation,” said Nevada Department of Wildlife law enforcement chief Rob Buonamici. “We have to literally prove the same elements as a homicide. Except we can’t go to the mountain and talk to the elk that are left and ask them who did it.” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has operated the largest animal forensics lab in the country in Ashland, Ore., since 1989.

Wardens also enlist gun-sniffing dogs to help catch poachers. Idaho Department of Fish and Game's Jim Sterling is owner and handler of gun-sniffing Pepper, whose first assignment was to find a missing gun used to illegally kill a bull elk in 2010. (AP photo: Sterling and Pepper with poacher's gun) That case also involved DNA testing of frozen meat the poachers had, and analyzing a blood stain one of the poachers' ATVs. Pepper found the gun after the spring thaw and forensic testing confirmed bullets from it were the same that killed the elk. Though the Humane Society of the United States reports only about 1 to 5 percent of poaching cases are ever investigated, wildlife experts insist the "rigorous, detailed work involved in solving such cases is worth the effort," Chereb reports. (Read more)