When MadukkaraiMaharaj, an 18-year-old elephant, died after being captured and kept at the Varagaliar Elephant Camp at Tamil Nadu Annamalai on June 21, 2016, tributes poured in from conservationists, who claimed that the animal had never caused much trouble to humans.
The tusker was captured by the forest department for allegedly entering human habitation and damaging crops for over three years. Maharaj received a heart-rending farewell, and his death stoked the debate again whether the animal would have survived if he hadn’t been captured. Luckily, this time, there was actual evidence to settle the argument.
The postmortem reports attributed the elephant’s death to multiple fractures. But how did the fractures take place? Did the attempt to capture him cause his death? Wildlife forensic scientists are working to answer these questions. Even the question of whether or not he was stressed was determined with the help of wildlife forensics. And playing animal CSI, determining the ‘unknown’ from the known, was India’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology – the Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (CCMB, LaCONES) located in Hyderabad.
“In such cases, one can take a look at the cortisol hormones found in faecal matter and determine the level of stress the animal was undergoing. It would definitely have helped more to analyse the stress level when the animal was alive so that it could have survived. Once it has died, we can only generate a report and leave it at that,” Dr KarthikeyanVasudevan, senior principal scientist at CCMB-LaCONES, said.
The CCMB-LaCONES project is a biotechnology lab working towards conservation of endangered wildlife species of the country. From providing technological support in the field of wildlife forensics to disease diagnostics, the lab has been efficiently supporting conservation of India’s wildlife since 2000. The lab has investigated over 1,330 cases of wildlife-related crimes. From the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau to the customs department to the forest department, everyone looks for support of the CCMB-LaCONES for solving cases of suspicious animal deaths, illegal trafficking, poaching and other such wildlife crimes.
For instance, in cases where protected wildlife has been killed and cooked, the poachers may protest innocence by saying that it is not an endangered species.
One of the earliest cases solved by the lab was of an Indian Peafowl killing in Mahabubnagar, Andhra Pradesh. Suspecting that a wildlife crime had occurred, the district forest officer asked for samples of cooked meat, remnants of offal, and a wooden block that was used for chopping the bird to be seized. Attempts were made by the poachers to mislead the investigation by providing samples of cooked and raw chicken. But DNA samples retrieved from the wooden block showed that peafowl had, indeed, been slaughtered, proving the forest department’s case.
In 2000, Saki, a 13-month old Royal Bengal tigress in Nehru Zoological Park, was brutally killed and skinned. When a suspect in possession of tiger skin and claws was arrested, the biological samples were analysed to see if they matched with that of Saki’s. It did. To put the nail in the poacher’s coffin, samples of Saki’s biological parents and siblings were also analysed.
