Wildlife forensics

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You might call him Queequeg. Like Herman Melville's character in the 1851 novel Moby Dick , Howard Rosenbaum plies the seas in search of whales following old whaling charts. Standing on the deck of a 12 m boat, he brandishes a crossbow with hollow‐tipped darts to harpoon the flanks of the whales as they surface to breathe (Fig 1). “We liken it to a mosquito bite. Sometimes there's a reaction. Sometimes the whales are competing to mate with a female, so they don't even react to the dart,” explained Rosenbaum, a conservation biologist and geneticist, and Director of the New York City‐based Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants programme. Rosenbaum and his colleagues use the darts to collect half‐gram biopsy samples of whale epidermis and fat—about the size of a human fingernail—to extract DNA as part of international efforts to save the whales. Figure 1. Howard Rosenbaum with a crossbow to obtain skin samples from whales. © Wildlife Conservation Society. Like Rosenbaum, many conservation biologists and wildlife managers increasingly rely on DNA analysis tools to identify species, determine sex or analyse pedigrees. George Amato, Director of the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, NY, USA, said that during his 25‐year career, genetic tools have become increasingly important for conservation biology and related fields. Genetic information taken from individual animals to the extent of covering whole populations now plays a valuable part in making decisions about levels of protection for certain species or populations and managing conflicts between humans and conservation goals. > […] many conservation biologists and wildlife managers increasingly rely on DNA analysis tools to identify species, determine sex or analyse pedigrees Moreover, Amato expects the use and importance of genetics to grow even more, given that conservation of biodiversity has become a …