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Kenya and Uganda Centre Stage in New Ivory Trafficking DNA Analysis

SEEJ-AFRICA
SEEJ-AFRICA

Mombasa and Kampala are the epicentre of 26 of the 49 ivory seizures analysed

Links to a number of articles on this new study  follow below.

February 23rd, 2022: Professor Samuel Wasser is no stranger to those who investigate or follow international ivory seizures and DNA analysis of those seizures. He has been in the business for over 20 years.

In 2015, Wasser and his team published:”Genetic assignment of large seizures of elephant ivory reveals Africa’s major poaching hotspots”.  This was followed in 2018 with: “Combating transnational organized crime by linking multiple large ivory seizures to the same dealer”.  

His most recent study has just been published and builds on the foundation provided by the previous reports by expanding his DNA analysis to incorporate study of close family members. This is on the basis that female elephants essentially stay in the same herd for life and even the males who do not stay with the herd, remain in proximity. This expanded analysis is now combined with physical evidence obtained from various law enforcement and NGO investigations to paint a clearer picture of who the African traffickers are, where they are from, and how they operate. 

Dr. Wasser et al refer to an evolving “pattern of consecutiveness’, as ivory shipments up to approximately 2009, were originating from northern Mozambique, southern Tanzania and Zambia being containerised in Tanzania and Malawi or Zambia. 

In 2010, Kenya became more in involved, with Nairobi and Mombasa seen as points of egress in addition to Dar es Salaam. In mid-2012, Kampala now came into play, containerising both Tanzanian and Kenyan ivory, before initial shipment by road or rail to Mombasa.  

In December 2012, a 6 tonne ivory seizure was made in Malaysia that was characterised by something not seen before. The shipment originated in Mombasa with savannah ivory and transited Togo where West African forest elephant ivory was added.  This clearly indicated either one criminal group supplying ivory through ports on both sides of the continent or cartels in communication with each other.

In May 2013, a 1.5t ivory seizure in United Arab Emirates was found to originate from Kampala while transiting Mombasa. From this point forward, until 2019 at least, Kampala became the point of origin, if not for ivory, for the logistical organization for many shipments of ivory from both sides of the African continent.  Mombasa continued as a preferred port of egress for savannah elephant ivory. This is clearly seen through the genetic matches of ivory and physical evidence obtained.  In this study of 49 major ivory seizures, Mombasa and/or Kampala are either port of origin or transit in 26 of them.  Although not specifically detailed in the study, the Kampala connection was the West African Cartel under the apparent leadership of Moazu Kromah. 

But the West African Cartel also had tentacles in West Africa and the study noted a move from Togo, to Lagos, Nigeria as its west coast consolidation point for forest elephant ivory exports. 

Ivory from the Burundi government stockpile was also identified in this study. Ivory seizures made in Kampala, Mombasa, South Sudan and Côte d’Ivoire, the earliest being in 2015,  all had quantities of ivory that were believed to be under lock and key.

Prosecutions and convictions were not a feature of this study beyond the hope that the knowledge unearthed may lead to increased success in future investigations and prosecutions.

Sammy Maina Ndirigiri, Fredrick Sababu Mungule, Nicholas Maweu John, Feisal Mohamed Ali, Ephantus Gitongo Mbare, are all Kenyans, charged in Mombasa Courts, allegedly involved in ivory  mentioned in this study.  They were all acquitted.  

But the various shipments for which they were all charged, each prosecuted separately and years apart, were all connected.  

Of the 26 seizures analysed,  involving Mombasa/Kampala, there has not been one conviction in either involved country.

 

DNA testing exposes tactics of international criminal networks trafficking elephant ivory

University of Washington  News
 
February 14th, 2022: A team led by scientists at the University of Washington and special agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has used genetic testing of ivory shipments seized by law enforcement to uncover the international criminal networks behind ivory trafficking out of Africa. The genetic connections across shipments that they’ve uncovered exposes an even higher degree of organization among ivory smuggling networks than previously known.
 
The paper, published Feb. 14 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, incorporates results from DNA testing of more than 4,000 African elephant tusks from 49 different ivory seizures made in 12 African nations over a 17-year period.
 
Exposing the connections among separate ivory seizures — made at African and Asian ports sometimes thousands of miles apart — will likely boost evidence against the criminals arrested for elephant poaching and ivory smuggling, and strengthen prosecutions of the responsible transnational criminal organizations, according to lead author Samuel Wasser, a UW professor of biology and director of the Center for Environmental Forensic Science, whose group developed the genetic tools behind this work.
 
“These methods are showing us that a handful of networks are behind a majority of smuggled ivory, and that the connections between these networks are deeper than even our previous research showed,” said Wasser.
 
Illegal ivory trade — along with habitat loss, climate change and other factors — has decimated the two elephant species in Africa. Although ivory seizures by authorities come from elephants that have already been slaughtered, the tusks can provide valuable information by illuminating the poaching, shipment activities and connectivity of traffickers.
 
Previous work by Wasser and his collaborators — published in 2018 in the journal Science Advances — identified tusks from the same elephant that were separated and smuggled in different shipments prior to being seized by law enforcement. Finding both tusks from the same individual linked those seizures to the same trafficking networks. Those efforts indicated that, from 2011 to 2014, cartels tended to smuggle ivory out of three African ports: Mombasa, Kenya; Entebbe, Uganda; and Lomé, Togo.
 
In this new endeavor, Wasser and his colleagues expanded their DNA analysis and testing regimen to also identify tusks of elephants that were close relatives — parents and offspring, full siblings and half-siblings. Adding close relatives expands the scope of the effort, Wasser said.
 
“If you’re trying to match one tusk to its pair, you have a low chance of a match. But identifying close relatives is going to be a much more common event, and can link more ivory seizures to the same smuggling networks,” said Wasser.
 
Wasser (left) and his team sort tusks from a seizure in Singapore in 2015 and use saws to cut away ivory samples for subsequent DNA extraction and genetic analysis.Kate Brooks
 
The team tested this expanded protocol on 4,320 tusks — from both forest elephants, Loxodonta cyclotis, and savannah elephants, Loxodonta africana — from 49 separate large shipments totaling 111 metric tons of ivory, all seized from 2002 to 2019. Results showed that a majority of these shipments could be linked based on matching tusks either from the same individual or from close relatives.
 
“Identifying close relatives indicates that poachers are likely going back to the same populations repeatedly — year after year — and tusks are then acquired and smuggled out of Africa on container ships by the same criminal network,” said Wasser. “This criminal strategy makes it much harder for authorities to track and seize these shipments because of the immense pressure they are under to move large volumes of containers quickly through ports,” said Wasser.
 
The genetic data show that a handful of interconnected smuggling networks are likely behind most large ivory shipments, most often exported from ports in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. By expanding the analysis to identify tusks from close relatives, the team could also link seizures from a dozen countries in Central and West Africa, stretching from Ivory Coast on the Atlantic Ocean to Mozambique on the Indian Ocean.
 
The larger analysis also can track how smuggling networks shifted their operations to different ports over time: from Tanzania in the early 2000s; then to Kenya and Uganda; and, most recently, to Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In West Africa, a temporal shift occurred from Togo to Nigeria.
 
These maps illustrate shifts in smuggling operations over time to different African ports. Each solid dot represents an ivory seizure in that country. Blue lines indicate that two seizures are connected by genetic matches among tusks, physical evidence or both. Initially, savannah elephant ivory shipments were smuggled through Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi, but shifted to Kenya in 2010-2012 and Uganda in 2013-2015. Next, operations shifted to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola in 2016-2019. Forest elephant ivory shipments shifted from Togo in 2013-2014 to Nigeria in 2016-2019, and showed connections to seizures in Central Africa.Wasser et al. 2022, Nature Human Behaviour
 
“By linking individual seizures, we’re laying out whole smuggling networks that are trying to get these tusks off the continent,” said Wasser.
 
The criminals behind one ivory seizure would have been prosecuted solely for that seizure. But the genetic evidence by Wasser and his team could strengthen investigations and prosecutions by linking responsible transnational criminal organizations to multiple seizures — leading to more severe penalties.
 
Co-authors are Charles Wolock, a UW doctoral student in biostatistics; John Brown III with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; UW biology research scientists Mary Kuhner, Yves Hoareau, Eunjin Jeon and Zofia Kaliszewska; Bruce Weir, a UW professor of biostatistics; Kin-Lan Han, a former UW researcher who is currently a geneticist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Chris Morris with SeeJ-Africa in Nairobi, Kenya; Ryan Horwitz, who was at the University of Michigan and is now a UW research scientist; Anna Wong and Charlene J. Fernandez with the National Parks Board of Singapore; and Moses Otiende with the Kenya Wildlife Service.
 
The research was funded by the Paul and Yaffe Maritz Family Foundation, the Wildlife Conservation Network, the Elephant Crisis Fund, the U.N. Development Program, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the Woodtiger Fund, the Wildcat Foundation, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, HSI, the World Bank, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, the National Institute of Justice and the National Institutes of Health.
 
For more information, contact Wasser at wassers@uw.edu.

Other Stories on the Wasser et al study:

NatGeo How the DNA method that caught the Golden State Killer can help catch elephant poachers

Small Groups Responsible for Smuggling Elephant Tusks

Elephant tusk DNA sleuthing reveals ivory trafficking networks

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