Tracking the rhino killers

摘要

Antique dealer Donald Allison was waiting to board a flight bound for China at Manchester airport in the UK on 30 June 2009 when he was stopped by border officials. He had with him an unusual sculpture of a bird on a log, purported to be an antique. Hidden inside the log were two rhino horns. On 5 October this year Allison was convicted of attempting to smuggle horns from an endangered species, and jailed. Allison's conviction may never have happened without the assistance of a DNA database called RhoDIS. Short for "Rhino DNA Index System", RhoDIS promises to do for wildlife crime what the human DNA database has done for murder investigations.