Building Africa’s First Genomic Intelligence Tool for Wildlife Crime
Every year, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos are seized from illegal trafficking networks, but a critical question almost always goes unanswered: where did they come from?
Without knowing the geographic origins of confiscated animals, authorities struggle to identify poaching hotspots, prosecute traffickers, or return animals to their home regions. The Ape Atlas project is changing that.
Led by Dr. Tomas Marques-Bonet at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, this project has developed Africa’s first continent-wide forensic genomics platform, a powerful, portable DNA toolkit that can rapidly trace the origin of confiscated great apes and put actionable intelligence into the hands of wildlife managers and enforcement agencies.
How It Works
Molecular biologist Pol Alentorn and field primatologist Luna Cuadrado test portable DNA extraction and sequencing equipment using Chimpanzee hair samples at Fundació MONA sanctuary in Girona, Spain. Photo credit: Pepe Molina
At the heart of the system is a portable Nanopore sequencing device paired with a streamlined protocol designed for field use, including by personnel with minimal genomics training. The team has developed step-by-step instructional films and comprehensive training materials to make the technology accessible to sanctuary veterinarians and wildlife officials across Africa.
To build the underlying reference database, the team has established formal partnerships with wildlife sanctuaries across Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Cameroon, geolocating more than 500 great ape samples to date. When a trafficked animal is confiscated, a small DNA sample can be run through the protocol to identify its likely population of origin, giving authorities a precise geographic lead to work from.
Last year, the Ape Atlas team made significant strides in preparing this technology for real-world deployment. In addition to formalizing their sanctuary partnership network and developing their training materials, they tested the entire workflow at Fundació MONA, a primate rescue and rehabilitation center in Spain, optimizing the methodology under mock-real-world conditions before taking it to the continent.
What’s Next
In 2026, field testing with African sanctuary partners begins in earnest. The team is also finalizing a centralized web platform that will aggregate data across partner sites and present findings in an accessible, map-based format for non-specialist users, putting the power of genomic analysis directly into the hands of wildlife managers and enforcement personnel.
The Vision
By pinpointing the origins of confiscated animals, the Ape Atlas system can help authorities map trafficking networks with new precision, identify and respond to poaching hotspots before populations collapse, and, in the most hopeful scenarios, facilitate the repatriation of orphaned animals to their ancestral home regions.
With fresh samples arriving from partner sanctuaries and analyses ongoing, the genetic atlas grows more powerful with every contribution. This is conservation science built to scale, designed to work on the ground, and aimed at one of the most urgent wildlife crime challenges of our time.
Ape Atlas is funded by Revive & Restore’s Catalyst Science Fund.
