Poachers caught with DNA expert's help

The use of DNA evidence in wildlife investigations is fairly new, but it's being used more and more, Assistant U.S. Attorney George Breitsameter said.

"I'm not sure if that's because of people's expectations, but DNA is the modern fingerprint that people can use to attach an individual to a crime," he said.

At the tiny cinderblock Idaho Department of Fish and Game lab where Rudolph works in Caldwell, the mail may bring a cardboard tube filled with bear bait or a wrapped hunk of meat taken from someone's freezer.

Game wardens often stumble across crime scenes while they're hiking in the wilderness, Rudolph said, so they have to collect the evidence with whatever makeshift container they can find in their backpacks.

Sometimes Rudolph finds herself living something like a countrified scene from TV's "CSI."

"I've been given a bone saw that had tissue from different animals stuck between the tiny teeth of the blade. Once, I had to pick through a shop vacuum for tissue. We mostly found hair," she said.

Few states have their own wildlife DNA lab, said Ken Goddard, director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab. So Goddard's lab in Ashland, Ore., handles wildlife evidence from across the nation, as well as for some international cases.

Some suspects, apparently unaware that investigators use advanced forensic techniques, get a little cocky and unwittingly help investigators, Rudolph said.

"One guy had a folding knife that a warden thought had been used in a poaching case, and when the officer asked for it, the guy laughed and said, 'Go ahead and take it. I've already cleaned it and boiled it and you won't find anything.'"

Back in the lab, Rudolph was undeterred. She put a layer of aluminum foil down on the lab counter and slowly opened the folding knife. As she ran a tiny brush over the hinge, the bristles dislodged a speck of dried blood.

The sample was minuscule. But it was enough to run a DNA test and connect the knife to the poached animal, she said. Another case closed.

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