CSI: Wildlife, solving crimes and saving endangered species

by Sarah Woodhurst, posted May 4, 2010

An audience of MU students and Columbia residents gathered on April 14 in Monsanto auditorium of the Bond Life Sciences Center to hear Laurel Neme, environmental journalist, speak about how the world’s first wildlife forensic lab is solving crimes and saving endangered species.

Neme is not only an environmental journalist, though. She is also a radio talk show host and author of Animal Investigators. She has appeared on ABC News’ Nightline and hosts her own radio show called “The Wild Life,” based in Burlington, Vt.

The lecture, “CSI: Wildlife,” informed the audience of the crime rate and forensic science that is behind solving animal trafficking crimes. Wildlife trafficking ranks third in the U.S. behind drug and human trafficking.

The U.S. is unique when it comes to wildlife forensic labs because we are currently the only country with a dedicated wildlife crime lab. Neme suggested that she sees this changing in future years, but as of now, the only wildlife crime lab is located in the U.S. and consists of 35 scientists.

“While there’s a lot of wildlife trade that exists, the black market is huge,” Neme said. “Compared to the profits, the penalties are very low for wildlife trafficking crimes than the penalties for drug crimes.”

One of the key questions that Neme focused on during the lecture was, “How can the carcass expose the intent of its killer?” Neme explained that for each species, the lab has to find an identifying characteristic for each part of each animal. “Human and wildlife forensics both aim to link a suspect to a crime or a victim,” Neme said. “While wildlife forensics have thousands of species, human forensics only has one.”

When it comes to the future of wildlife forensics, Neme pointed out that it is important to stay ahead of the curve by answering questions before they occur.

The lab has to distance its investigation between what’s protected and what’s not protected. The ability to be able to tell where a sample of a wildlife animal comes from is critical. It is also critical to determine if a big cat was captive bred or wild caught.

Stacey Winkeler, biology major and president of Mizzou Tigers for Tigers, decided to listen to Neme’s lecture to become better informed about the type of work that is performed in a wildlife crime case. Mizzou Tigers for Tigers is a student organization created to save the wild tiger, the university’s endangered mascot.

“I want to go into a career of saving a species, so it was interesting to hear how they can apply forensic science to solving an animal crime,” Winkeler said.

There are many factors to consider when investigating wildlife crimes, so many factors in fact that Neme challenged the audience to study wildlife forensics for themselves. Wildlife forensics is not a widely known topic compared to drug and human murder crimes, so the future of wildlife forensics lies within students’ generations getting involved and discovering new ways to improve investigation cases.

“If you don’t know there’s a problem, you can’t possibly work to fix it,” Neme said.

For more information, visit the Laurel Neme website.

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