ABSTRACT
Wildlife trafcking, including illegal sheries and timber harvesting, is the fourth largest global illicit sector after narcotics, counterfeiting, and human trafcking, yet until recently law enforcement agencies have received limited support to address this issue (Agarwal, 2015). Wildlife crime
has ravaged formerly recovering populations of charismatic megafauna on land such as elephants (Agarwal, 2015), rhinoceros (Milliken and Shaw, 2012), and big cats (Saif et al., 2016) and also threatens their marine counterparts, such as cetaceans (Taylor et al., 2016), tunas (Pramod et al., 2017), sharks (Chuang et al., 2016), and rays (Asis et al., 2014). There is growing public pressure to rectify this, leading to
CONTENTS
15.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................ 285 15.2 An Overview of Legal Protections in Place for Sharks and Rays and Enforcement Issues That Can Be Addressed with DNA Forensics ..................................................................... 286
15.2.1 Protected Species (Local, National, Regional) ............................................................................................... 286 15.2.2 Elasmobranch Sanctuaries .............................................................................................................................. 287 15.2.3 Finning and Fin Bans ..................................................................................................................................... 287 15.2.4 Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna ................................... 287
15.3 DNA Forensics Approaches........................................................................................................................................ 288 15.3.1 Sequence-Based Species Identication .......................................................................................................... 288 15.3.2 PCR-Based Species Identication .................................................................................................................. 289 15.3.3 Population of Origin Assessed Using DNA ................................................................................................... 290
15.4 Case Studies .................................................................................................................................................................291 15.4.1 The Americas...................................................................................................................................................291
