In Kenya, poaching of wildlife for bush meat, trophies such as rhino horns and elephant tusks, skins of animals, feathers of birds, as well as illegal trafficking in animals for the pet trade such as rare chameleons and parrots, has reached epic proportions.
This is bound to change following the launch of a forensic and genetic laboratory last month at the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) headquarters in Nairobi.
The laboratoryโthe first of its kind in East Africaโis expected to aid in the provision of accurate identification of seized wildlife and wildlife products in order to bring to justice perpetrators of wildlife crimes.
Francis Gakuya, the head of KWSโs veterinary service department, who will coordinate the new laboratory, explains how it will make it possible to convict more wildlife poachers, what other work will be done there, and the main challenges it faces.
Share this article
Poachers had discovered that our only means of separating the two was by the anatomical features of the animals.ย To beat this, they started deboning all bush meat before sending it to the markets. With all the bones removed, it became very difficult to get conclusive whether the meat was from wildlife. This is when we started thinking of scientific tests.
We first started using protein tests, but that didnโt prove effective for wildlife. So we turned to DNA. This was about five years ago. Before then, weโd been using elimination evidence. We would take the samples to the government chemists, where the scientists would tell us if these are domestic animals or not. This had a lot of challenges, because it never said exactly what type of animal or which animal the product was from.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: How Kenya’s New Wildlife Forensic and Genetics Lab Will Help Save Wildlife
