CSI wildlife: How science is helping detectives to track down poaching and illegal trade in wildlife.

Abstract

EMBO Reports (2018) e47452 The migration of the European eel is one of the nature's most remarkable journeys. To spawn, the female eel swims downstream from freshwater lakes and rivers, 6,000 km across the Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea. Her body chemistry changes to cope with saltwater, her stomach shrinks to conserve energy, and her pupils widen so she can see better in the low light of the ocean. Once hatched, the eel larvae grow into tiny leaf‐shaped creatures less than a centimetre long that are carried by ocean currents back across the Atlantic (Fig 1). The odds of making it back to Europe are thought to be less than one in five hundred. Due to pollution, overfishing and habitat destruction, they are now critically endangered. And soon, they could be made extinct entirely by a new threat: illegal poaching. Figure 1. European eels are a critically endangered species. Credit: Ecofact. > Wildlife crime has exploded in the past 10–15 years, and is now the fourth largest crime area in terms of profit behind illegal drugs, counterfeiting and human trafficking Thus, when 18 tonnes of eel meat was discovered in shipping containers in Vancouver harbour in May 2018 during Operation Thunderstorm—a major international wildlife crime sting led by Interpol—officials were taken aback by the sheer extent of an illegal, globalised trade that threatens wildlife not just in distant savannahs or jungles but on the doorstep of some of the world's richest nations. “Eels cannot be bred in captivity: we have found that they get poached in countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and France, are transported in hold luggage through major transport hubs including Heathrow and Frankfurt airports to Hong Kong,” explained Sheldon Jordan, Director General, Wildlife Enforcement and Climate Change, Canada, who led Operation Thunderstorm for Interpol's Wildlife Crime Working Group. “From there, they are smuggled into mainland China, farmed, and later sold on as …