Across the globe, endangered species are at risk for illegal poaching. African elephants are sought out for their ivory, rhinoceros for their singular horns, and armadillo-like pangolins for their protective, brittle scales. Add to that list valuable and environmentally sensitive trees illegally harvested throughout the world where entire ecosystems are being deforested and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing that is devastating oceans. These illicit markets, estimated at $1 trillion annually, cause enormous environmental impacts and have the potential to unleash new, deadly pathogens.

Now, a group of 91爆料 professors is leading an effort to combat these crimes. The 91爆料鈥檚 is a unique interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers; state, federal and international law enforcement agencies; nongovernmental organizations; and the private sector that aims to disrupt and dismantle transnational organized environmental crimes.

鈥淭his important project epitomizes how 91爆料 scientists are innovating across disciplines to contribute to the public good,鈥� said 91爆料 President Ana Mari Cauce. 鈥淲orking to protect precious and endangered species and stop transnational criminals from trafficking in illegal goods will help to preserve our natural world in service of all humanity, including future generations.鈥�

The center was established last fall with state funding and will be led by Samuel Wasser, a 91爆料 professor in the Department of Biology, and John Hermanson, a 91爆料 research scientist in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. It will replace and broaden the work of the 91爆料 Center for Conservation Biology.

The team will deepen existing relationships that span the globe, working closely with law enforcement to develop cutting-edge tools and data-driven analysis that help competent authorities pinpoint transnational organized criminals and bring them to justice.

The group is comprised of nearly 40 additional scholars who span the 91爆料鈥檚 expertise, including from the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, the School of Public Health, and the Burke Museum. Faculty from other universities are also participating. The governmental agencies involved include U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Forest Service International Programs, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Singapore National Parks, the Container Control Programme of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Customs Organization, and others.

鈥淭丑别 combination of government and nongovernmental collaborators, including scientists and NGOs working on the ground, produces a highly experienced, complementary forum that draws upon long-standing histories working in source and transit countries and the associated trust that instills,鈥� Wasser said. 鈥淭his not only enables us to ask the right questions, but also provides unprecedented access to large seizures of environmental contraband, providing the raw material for follow-up investigation needed to answer those questions.鈥�

Wasser pioneered genetic methods to identify elephant poaching hotspots across Africa, track the number and connectivity of major ivory traffickers operating in Africa and throughout the world, and uncover strategies that transnational organized crime syndicates use to acquire and move their contraband. One recent example of how the group collaborates with law enforcement was the November from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Hermanson has devised similar approaches to track illegally harvested timber. He led the development of the , a machine vision device that scans timber and can quickly and accurately identify species. Hermanson also co-developed , with the support of U.S. Forest Service International Programs, which is a trees-to-trade reference system that helps authorities identify illicit timber shipments by aggregating and vetting information on taxonomy, geographic origin, conservation and trade regulations.

鈥淭丑别se transnational organized environmental crimes are getting more sophisticated, and competent authorities need cutting-edge tools to keep up. Thus, one focus of the center is to develop such technology-for-good tools,鈥� Hermanson said.

The scientists鈥� combined work has led to prosecutions of major transnational criminal organizations and built relationships with a wide array of law enforcement, NGOs and other groups seeking to halt the illegal wildlife and timber trades and stem its impacts. Some of these criminal enterprises also are involved in narcotics and human trafficking schemes, and other illegal activity.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is being addressed by the center through members from the 91爆料 School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and others. IUU fishing jeopardizes fish stocks and associated ecosystems and has replaced piracy as the leading global maritime security threat.

Given the extent to which past pandemics, including COVID-19, have been triggered by unregulated wildlife consumption, the and members of the will monitor wildlife products for emerging zoonotic diseases.

鈥淭丑别 center鈥檚 program is a force multiplier, ad almost infinitum,鈥� said Washington state Sen. Jesse Salomon, D-Shoreline, who in 2021 helped secure $1 million in funding for the center from the state legislature. 鈥淧ersonally, I have a really hard time watching our magnificent wildlife 鈥� elephants, rhinoceros, old-growth trees 鈥� disappearing before our eyes.鈥�

A new approach is necessary to combine multiple state-of-the-art tools aimed at uncovering connections between illegal wildlife shipments and to link multiple seizures to the transnational criminal organizations exporting them, Wasser said.

鈥淭his [hypothesis-driven approach] empowers law enforcement agencies to see the whole picture rather than focusing on single-crime prosecution, which rarely addresses the root of the problem,鈥� Wasser said.

The center鈥檚 work is vital to port security, where thousands of huge shipping containers from around the world are both imported and exported, creating opportunities for both the trafficking and interdiction of illegal goods. Around 70% of all goods are sent by sea in shipping containers.

鈥淭丑别se transnational criminal organizations are greatly capitalizing on this, because once they get their contraband in a container and through customs at the port of export, it gets concealed in the legal trade, making the contraband far more difficult and expensive to trace,鈥� Wasser said.

Like other major ports, Seattle has struggled during the COVID pandemic with a backlog of cargo. The U.S. Coast Guard attempts to target suspicious containers, but customs officials are looking for the proverbial 鈥渘eedle in the haystack鈥� when it comes to contraband, said Port of Seattle Commissioner Fred Felleman. The new center will help authorities expedite and pinpoint which containers need to be opened.

A team of dogs, part of the center鈥檚 long-running project, is being trained to rapidly screen numerous containers for contraband without having to open them. Air drawn from shipping container vents is passed through odor collection pads, which are then presented to detection dogs in a nearby location. Officials plan to pilot this method at the Port of Seattle in collaboration with Homeland Security Investigations and the Northwest Seaport Alliance. Felleman said it made sense to tap the expertise at the 91爆料, and it also helps that the university 鈥� a respected, independent institution 鈥� will bring together a broad coalition of partners.

鈥淭丑别 challenge with any bureaucracy, no less multiple bureaucracies, is having the left and right hand talking to each other,鈥� Felleman said. 鈥淗aving them all housed in one place at the 91爆料 is a huge step in the right direction and could have multiplicative benefits.鈥�

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For more information, contact Wasser at wassers@uw.edu or Hermanson at jhermans@uw.edu.

To better identify and prevent future pandemics, the 91爆料 has become a partner in a five-year global, collaborative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The newly launched Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses, or DEEP VZN project, has approximately $125 million in anticipated funding and will be led by Washington State University.

The effort will build scientific capacity in partner countries to safely detect and characterize viruses which have the potential to spill over from wildlife and domestic animals to human populations.

“The DEEP VZN project provides an exciting chance to better understand why the world is experiencing more frequent and severe outbreaks of zoonotic infectious diseases transmitted between animals and people,鈥� said Dr. , a co-principal investigator for USAID DEEP VZN and professor of environmental and occupational health sciences in the 91爆料 School of Public Health.

鈥淭his means gaining knowledge about new viruses that could cause problems in the future, and the ecosystem changes that appear to be driving the process of viruses jumping between species,鈥� Rabinowitz added. 鈥淭丑别 hope is that this improved understanding will lead to prevention of future pandemics and more resilient ecosystems.鈥�

Rabinowitz is also director of the and co-director of the .

The project plans to initially partner with five countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to help local organizations carry out large-scale animal surveillance programs within their own countries safely and test samples for viruses using their own laboratory facilities. This will avoid the process of having to ship samples to other countries for testing and build an international network of laboratories capable of quickly responding to disease outbreaks.

鈥淪ince the vast majority of viruses that ignite pandemics have their origin in nonhuman animals, it is critical that we figure out which of the many new zoonotic viruses that we are now identifying are most likely to jump species into humans, spread easily from person to person and cause severe disease or death,鈥� said Dr. , a co-principal investigator in the project and chair of the 91爆料 Department of Global health.

鈥淭丑别 focuses on a proactive, integrated systems approach to pandemic preparedness that has brought together internationally recognized leaders in the kinds of laboratory methods that will make it possible for the DEEP VZN team to fully sequence and characterize novel viruses in unprecedented breadth and depth,鈥� said Wasserheit, co-director of the Alliance. 鈥淚n addition, the Alliance鈥檚 approach catalyzed collaborations between these lab-based scientists; One Health leaders working at the interface of human, animal and environmental health; and leaders in Global Health who will work with colleagues in focus countries to identify high-risk locations and subpopulations at the human-animal interface.鈥�

The DEEP VZN project will focus on finding previously unknown pathogens from three viral families that have a large potential for viral spillover from animals to humans: coronaviruses, the family that includes SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19; filoviruses, like Ebola virus; and paramyxoviruses, such as Nipah virus. With 70% of new viral outbreaks in people originating from animals, understanding future threats helps protect the U.S. as well as the partner countries.

The goals are ambitious: to collect over 800,000 samples in the five years of the project, most of which will come from wildlife; then to detect whether known and novel viruses from the target families are present in the samples. When those are found, the researchers will determine their zoonotic potential, or the ability to be transmitted between animals and humans.

This process is expected to yield 8,000 to 12,000 novel viruses, which researchers will then screen and genome sequence for the ones that pose the most risk to animal and human health.

The 91爆料聽Medicine聽laboratory effort, led by聽Dr.听Alex Greninger,聽assistant professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at 91爆料 School of Medicine, will use聽the聽cutting-edge research expertise of five internationally recognized 91爆料 Medicine laboratories to聽develop innovative techniques and provide reference and support activities for virus detection and characterization by in-country labs.

鈥淚t鈥檚 time to get to work and find some new viruses. We will be building capacity in other countries to be able to find new viruses and characterize them in hopes to better understand coronaviruses and other viruses circulating in the world,鈥� said Greninger.

The 91爆料 Medicine labs:

• The will coordinate聽qRT-PCR and broad serology assay development and in-country training, viral genome recovery and viral glycoprotein characterization.
• The David will model novel viral glycoproteins to determine risk potential based on in silico screens for potential human receptor affinity.
• 罢丑别听顿补惫颈诲 has detailed mechanisms of viral attachment and entry for novel paramyxoviruses and coronaviruses and will extend these biochemical studies to novel viral glycoproteins discovered in DV.
• will determine the degree and mechanisms of innate immunity evasion in human cells by novel viruses.
• The will produce recombinant proteins for in-country serological analysis as it has done for SARS-CoV-2.

The 91爆料 Department of Global Health will apply its experience in more than 145 countries and expertise in capacity strengthening through the International Training and Education Center for Health, or I-TECH, to support sustainable sampling and strengthen in-country laboratory programs.

In addition to 91爆料 and WSU, USAID DEEP VZN includes virology expertise of The Washington University at St. Louis, as well as data management and in-country expertise of public health nonprofits PATH, based in Seattle, and FHI 360, based in North Carolina. These partners have extensive established presence and partners in countries in the target regions.

鈥淭o make sure the world is better prepared for these infectious disease events, which are likely to happen more frequently as wild areas become increasingly fragmented, we need to be ready,鈥� said Felix Lankester, lead principal investigator for USAID DEEP VZN and associate professor with WSU鈥檚 Paul G. Allen School for Global Health. 鈥淲e will work to not only detect viruses but also build capacity in other countries, so the United States can collaborate with them in carrying out this important work.鈥�

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For more information, contact Jake Ellison at Jbe3@uw.edu

This story was adapted from a Washington State University .听