Wildlife crime is a major cause of concern across the globe as it poses serious threat to the conservation of biodiversity and environment. In addition, huge amount of money involved in illegal wildlife trade is being used to fuel other forms of organized crime such as human trafficking, terrorist activities, drugs, and firearms smuggling further deepens the concerns to take immediate steps to arrest this form of crime.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild flora and fauna (CITES) and the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 in India provide protection to the wildlife and strictly prohibits any form of trade in protected wild flora and fauna. Wildlife forensics plays a pivotal role in the successful implementation of these laws by providing aid in investigation and correct identification the species from different evidentiary materials and body parts/ products encountered in such cases. Various techniques such as morphological, anatomical, protein, and DNA based analysis have been used for this purpose with some inherent advantages and disadvantages over each other.
Recently, ATR FT-IR spectroscopy in combination with chemometrics has also been reported which offers a non-destructive, rapid, facile and on the spot analysis of wildlife materials in an objective and eco-friendly manner with minimal sample preparation. In this talk, applications, advancements, prospects, and limitations of this technique will be discussed.