ABSTRACT
Poaching and illegal trafficking are major threats to biodiversity, especially when endangered felids are concerned. Tigers are iconic animals, and there is huge demand for their body parts both in the national and international illegal markets. India forms the largest tiger conservation unit in the world and poaching is at its peak even though there are stringent laws and strict enforcement. In the present study, we analytically estimated the tiger seizure cases in India from 2001-2021 using newspaper archives as the main source of data. The data was geo-referenced to understand the details of seizure, demand, and locality. We statistically correlated the seizure rate with the density of tigers, tiger reserves, and various other socio-economic factors. Our result shows that skin, claws, bones, and teeth have more demand, with nails and teeth being the most preferred in local markets. The bones, flesh, and other parts were mostly seized in the border states of the north and eastern states. The intensity of seizures is very high in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Assam. From our analysis, we predict four trade routes for the export of the seized parts: the Nepal-Bhutan border, Assam border, the Brahmaputra, and the Mumbai port. This corresponds to the five tiger conservation blocks in India, and we observed the seizure rate is high near the Western Ghats region, which has not yet been noticed. Apart from the seizure, we are unconcerned with the seizure's origin or the local trading routes. The study demonstrates the importance of identifying the source population using DNA methods and carefully enforcing the rules in area of poaching. We assert that current approaches are incapable of resolving the issue and that a more precise and effective forensic procedure capable of resolving the issue at the minute local level is critical for precisely tracing trade channels. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10708-022-10633-4.
ABSTRACT
Accurate species and sex identification of non-invasive and forensic samples of the tiger and leopard is still confusing when using the allele-specific methods. We designed allele-specific methods with penultimate nucleotide mismatch in a nested manner for the exact identification and double-checking of forensic samples. The mismatch design is a novel concept in species and sex identification, making the allele-specific targeting precise. We developed three sets of markers, a 365 bp outer and a 98 bp inner marker for nested tiger species identification assay, 136 bp leopard specific marker, and carnivore sex identification markers. We validated the method with tissue/blood forensic samples of various felids and herbivorous available in our lab and on known fecal samples from Vandalur Zoo. We also collected 37 scat samples at diverse stages of deterioration from the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu, India. The 365 bp targeted markers resulted in 70.2% (n = 22; 22/37) amplification success, while the 98 bp FAM-labelled marker amplified 89% (n = 33; 33/37) scat samples independently. The 136 bp leopard markers answered four scat samples (11%) unrequited by the tiger specific markers. We evaluated species and the sex identification with these markers in another 190 non-invasive samples provided by the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve authorities. Among which 56.3% (n = 107) of samples were recognized as tiger (64 male and 43 female) and 38.9% (n = 74) as leopard (41 male and 33 female). The method supersedes any other previous methods in this regard by its high accuracy and simplicity.