CSI-Africa may not be joining TV listings any time soon, but the DNA analysis popularised by the glamorous television shows are increasingly being used to crack down on the distinctly unglamorous world of wildlife poaching.

In the case of African elephants, DNA fingerprinting has been used for a number of years now, so it has reached levels of sophistication that make it a valuable tool for tackling the illegal trade.

A nugget of ivory can tell a professor at the University of Washington Wasser not only which species of elephant it came from but where in Africa the animal once roamed.

This level of detail in the findings proved crucial in the recent meeting of CITES, where DNA analysis revealed a recent multi-tonne seizure of ivory in Asia contained a significant amount from Tanzania and Zambia.

They also showed poaching was concentrated geographically, suggesting the involvement of highly-organised crime networks able to execute large-scale raids.

The findings helped sink proposals in Doha by both countries, who had based their bids in part on the contention that their populations were well managed.

These gene-based investigative methods are helping resource-starved wildlife police begin to even the playing field in the battle against poaching and smuggling.

They have led to arrests, and can put the lie to claims by some vendors that the illicit wildlife they openly peddle is farm-raised or from non-endangered species.

“There is a lot of laundering of animals taken from the wild through captive breeding facilities,” said John Sellar, the top enforcement official at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The meeting has pledged to better organise wildlife law enforcement, and DNA analysis could go towards providing solid evidence for high-end prosecutions that will be crucial to the long-term crackdown on smuggling.

But matching requires a reference library of genetic information, which only exists today for a handful of species.

“We have a large database of DNA profiles for elephants, tigers and sturgeon,” the source of caviar, said Sellar.

But for hundreds of other species the database-building groundwork has yet to be done.

The comprehensive genetic map for African elephants has been derived as a result of a decade long project collecting dung samples.

In “junk DNA,” the 99 percent of genetic material that is not genes, minor differences within herds and between regions are more likely to show up as that DNA is more subject to mutation.

Even though methods have been refined, there is still a long way to go before DNA analysis can provide on-the-ground day-to-day results. Funding and time is still required for collection of data on a wider range of species and to bring down the cost and complexity of the testing.

“DNA analysis has major potential, but has not yet had a significant impact — it is difficult to use as a tool a remains pretty costly,” said Holly Dublin, head of the Elephants Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

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