Among the scientiíc techniques used to combat poaching and wildlife traïcking, DNA is king, says Cindy Harper, a veterinary geneticist at the University of Pretoria. Its application in animal investigations is small-scale but growing in a íeld with a huge volume of crime: The value of the illegal wildlife trade is as much as $20 billion per year, Interpol estimates. "It's not just a few people swapping animals around," says Greta Frankham, a wildlife forensic scientist at the Australian Center for Wildlife Genomics in Sydney. "It's got links to organized crime; it is an enormous amount of turnover on the black market."