New wildlife trafficking studies miss the point, says legendary investigator

Old ivory is not killing elephants,  points out Daniel Stiles,  & AI theories are not evidence sufficient to bring seizures & convictions 

WASHINGTON D.C.––Seven years after the still officially unsolved murder of ivory traffic investigator Esmond Martin in Nairobi,  Kenya,  Humane World for Animals continues to use the methods he pioneered to pursue the ghosts of elephants,  whales,  walruses,  hippos,  warthogs,  and even mastodons and wooly mammoths.

(See The ghost of ivory traffic investigator Esmond Martin stalks Connecticut and Who killed ivory trade investigator Esmond Martin, why?)

Blogged Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block on June 4,  2025,  disclosing recent findings,  “Our investigators visited 31 stores across Pennsylvania in March and searched more than 32 online auctions and marketplace sales occurring between January and April 2025.

Earrings,  bracelets,  necklaces

“They found earrings,  bracelets,  necklaces and other pieces of jewelry;  figurines;  tusk and tooth carvings;  cutlery sets;  and an array of other household and personal items for sale in shops stretching from Swissdale to Allentown and points in between.

“Of the 63 locations investigated,”  continued Block,  “17 had ivory for sale that our investigators identified as originating from elephants.

“In total, 383 pieces of ivory were identified by our investigators in-person and online,  more than we’ve seen in other recent investigations in Connecticut and Florida.

“The total value of items found during the investigation was nearly $38,000, with items ranging in price from $5 to $1,150.

“None of sellers could verify age or origin”

“When asked by our investigators,”  Block said,  “none of the sellers had or could provide any information or documentation to verify the age or origin of the ivory items.

“Without such documentation, it is impossible to know whether those items were imported in violation of federal law.”

Block shared the Humane World for Animals findings to plug Pennsylvania state bill HB 994, introduced by state representative Leanne Krueger.

The bill,  Block hopes,  along with laws based on similar bills enacted in thirteen other states and the District of Columbia,  will close gaps in legislation that continue to imperil elephants,  giraffes,  and hippopotamuses,  among other species.

“The U.S. imports more giraffe and hippo parts than any other country,”  Block mentioned.

“No threat to today’s elephants”

The Humane World for Animals research,  opined anthropologist Daniel Stiles,  who often worked with Esmond Martin,  beginning in 1999,  is “certainly similar to the type of work I used to do.  The studies that I carried out,  often with Esmond,  were much more detailed though,”  Stiles told ANIMALS 24-7.

“Based on the scanty description,  but no photos,  and the video,” posted by Block,  “most of the pieces looked to be second-hand,  not newly imported,  thus no threat to today’s elephants,”  Stiles believes.

“If less than 100 years old,  it would still be illegal to sell.  There is still a pretty active market in the U.S. for recycled ivory,  much less than pre-2014 for newly imported ivory,”  Stiles said.

AI as trafficking watchdog

Stiles remains actively involved in wildlife trafficking investigation in his role as project manager for more than a decade with the Project to End Great Ape Slavery,  PEGAS for short.

From that perspective,  plus his experience working with Esmond Martin,  whom Stiles remembers as “incredible––he just kept going,”  Stiles was much more critical of “Encoding and Decoding Illegal Wildlife Trade Networks Reveals Key Airport Characteristics and Undetected Hotspots,”  a paper by Hannah Murray,  Meredith Gore,  and Bistra Dilkina,  published by the online journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Murray is a Ph.D. candidate at the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science,  part of the University of Southern California.

Gore is a professor and research director in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland,  College Park.

Dilkina is co-director of the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society.

What all three of them appear to be is academic theoreticians with little or no actual field experience investigating wildlife trafficking.

“Machine learning”

Their paper,  much praised in several other academic periodicals,  is subtitled “Machine learning methods enable the discovery of previously hidden illegal wildlife trade hotspots within global flight networks among high centrality airports.”

Wrote Murray,  “We were inspired by the challenge of so much of the international wildlife traffic being ‘unseen.’  What we do know comes from documented seizures,  which are incidents of wildlife trafficking where authorities catch the traffickers in the act and report it to a global agency such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime or TRAFFIC.

“But what about the incidents that go undetected or are never reported?” Murray asked.

“Our team set out to uncover information about these undetected incidents,  particularly those that take place on the airline flight network.

Decoding what data?

“The biggest hurdle was decoding the data,”  Murray said,  but what data,  if the traffickers and/or items trafficked are not actually detected?

“If seizures were documented at all,”  Murray continued,  “the records were often incomplete and biased,  as some countries report incidents more than others and have different requirements regarding the extent of information they must report.

“To obtain the clearest picture possible,”  Murray said,  “we combined two of the largest open-access datasets on wildlife trade occurring within the airline flight network.

“When examining the airports implicated in this combined dataset,  we found what many others have already confirmed: that airports in Africa and Asia are the most dominant source and destination regions,  respectively.

What makes an airport more vulnerable?

“However,  beneath the surface,  we discovered that the network is far more complex.

“We asked the following questions:  What makes an airport more vulnerable to wildlife trafficking?  And where might trafficking be occurring under the radar?”

This is where Murray,  Gore,  and Dilkina appear to have strayed far off the trail,  chasing imaginary ghosts in a manner that actual boots-on-the-ground wildlife trafficking investigators,  relying on evidence instead of theory,  would not have done.

Recounted Murray,  “We first calculated each airport’s centrality,  which measures how connected an airport is to other airports.  We hypothesized that an airport’s centrality in the full flight network could give us clues into its role in the illegal wildlife trade network. Our results revealed that airports with high degree and betweenness centrality in the global flight network are more likely to be involved in IWT.”

Tracks,  droppings,  dust?

Well no.  Not without actual trafficked animals or body parts.  One cannot accurately declare “They went thataway!” without seeing tracks,  droppings,  and a cloud of dust.

Murray,  Gore,  and Dilkina did mention that “Factors such as weak governance and elevated rates of other environmental crimes also increase risk.  Conversely,  strong civil society and effective crime prevention measures made airports less likely to be involved.”

Murray,  Gore,  and Dilkina acknowledged that,  “Our model flagged several airports as likely international wildlife trafficking hotspots––even though they had no recorded seizures.

“Some of the airports in which the model was over 95% confident,  such as Shanghai Hongqiao in China and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in the United States,  have since been linked to trafficking in news reports,”  Murray wrote.

“This suggests that our approach can help spot hidden risks before they even appear in the global reporting databases.”

Bears in the woods

All of which is a bit like suggesting that the bigger the woods,  the more likely a bear is to shit in it somewhere,  sometimes,  even though most bears live in other woods elsewhere.

Fumed Stiles,  “This is one of the most ill-informed articles I’ve seen in a long time.  The authors are lucky I was wasn’t asked to review it.

“Choice of trade chain supply routes are based on air/sea ports where the traffickers have either established facilitators who will allow the product through,  or where port personnel are known to be incompetent.

“Seizures are usually accidents,  when unexpectedly the bribed inside person was missing at the time needed,”  Stiles explained.

“Tiger bones don’t go to Dallas”

“The choice of routes varies also according to which products are being trafficked,”  Stiles detailed,  “because source and demand areas vary depending on what the species and product are.  Tiger bones don’t go to Dallas-Fort Worth.

“The third most important factor,  related to the first,”  Stiles added,  “is susceptibility to corruption,  where bribes work and where they don’t.  Just picking centrality is useless. Dubai would have a high centrality score and has a high demand for exotic live animals,  but Emirates and the Dubai Customs Department. staff are strict in preventing trafficking.

“So traffickers in Dubai fly the animals first to Muscat or a Saudi airport and transport them in by road,”  Stiles said.

“A Dubai police lieutenant colonel is the facilitator.  He has his own private zoo, is connected to the Al Maktoum royal family,  and is buddies with many of the big traffickers.

“Sends a fixer”

“He sends a fixer to the border post to facilitate import of high value animals.  The reason Shanghai gave a ‘false-positive’ is the same,”  Stiles further explained.

“The authorities are quite strict in enforcement in recent years,  so product uses alternative routes,  depending on what it is.”

“The [Murray,  Gore,  and Dilkina] article is correct in identifying betweenness centrality as important,  Stiles conceded,  “as this basically is an extension of route and locations of the airports in an airlines service.

“For the reasons above, the two most used airlines by traffickers for the products I study are Ethiopian and Turkish,  with Qatar third. The first two have extensive routes in Africa and the right Asian destinations. Turkish Airlines and Istanbul airport (IST),  however,  are clamping down and making more seizures.  Addis Ababa makes almost no seizures, so is highly favored.

“The findings of this paper won’t help stop trafficking,”  Stiles concluded.

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