Rare pangolin rescued from smuggler, accused arrested<\/a><\/b><\/p>\nOut of the eight species of pangolins found across the globe, two \u2013 the Indian Pangolin and the Chinese Pangolin \u2013 are found in India. They are trafficked \u2013 mostly to China and other south-east Asian countries – for their meat and scales. Many times live ones are also smuggled even though they enjoy the highest level of protection under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 of India.<\/p>\n
\u201cTill date, it was very difficult to identify an individual from the scales, the species and the region from where it came. But we have developed a DNA marker system which could identify each individual from a bag full of scales. In the follow-up, we are now developing a region-specific DNA database for pangolin covering the entire distribution range,\u201d said Mukesh Thakur, who is a scientist and the coordinator of Centre for Forensic Sciences at ZSI who also led the research.<\/p>\n
The scientists now plan to work with the International Union for Conservation of Nature\u2019s Pangolin special group to draft a pangolin identification guide by which species of pangolins can be identified.<\/p>\n
This would allow security agencies, such as the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, forest and wildlife department, to get an estimate of the number of individuals killed, the species \u2013 Indian or Chinese – and their origin.<\/p>\n
The ZSI\u2019s findings have been published in the International Journal of Legal Medicine, a peer-reviewed International journal brought out by Springer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going through the research contents. It seems to be a very important study and a big jump forward in tackling pangolin trade in India. We have to find out the practicality and how it could be effectively utilized in the field,\u201d said Tilotama Verma, additional director of Wildlife Crime Control Bureau.<\/p>\n
A study published by a wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC in 2018 estimated that close to 6,000 pangolins were seized from illegal trade, involving India, over the period 2009\u20132017. However, an estimated total of 5,772 animals is likely to be an under-estimate as an unknown fraction of illegal wildlife trade is detected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been doing this for quite a long time for tigers because we have a huge countrywide repository. If we find tiger bones, we would be to tell how many tigers do they belong to and which part of the country the animal came from \u2013 central India, Terai or maybe the Western Ghats \u2013 because tigers from specific geographical locations have different markers,\u201d said YV Jhala, senior scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India.<\/p>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time, scientists from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) in Kolkata have developed a forensic kit based on DNA fingerprints that could help authorities track illegal trading of pangolins \u2013 the world\u2019s most trafficked animal. The new kit named the \u2018Pangolin Indexing System\u2019 uses DNA markers to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kolkata"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/january-central-selling-arrested-tuesday-pangolin-gangurde_e36de27e-c0e1-11ea-9738-294dc8afd766.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bengalnewstimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}