Ken Goddard was beat. You only had to look at the floor to tell what sort of a day he鈥檇 had. A pair of bloody boots, the severed head of a cougar-its awful eyes wild and accusing-some wolf skulls, and a fine dust of powdered rhino horn . . . It was a dirty business, but someone had to nail those creeps who made millions out of endangered species. As chief of the world鈥檚 only wildlife forensic lab, it was the only job he had ever wanted. Aside from writing crime novels and running a ranch, that is. Shoot! He鈥檇 been too busy to pick up his pale-blue Caddy from the garage and that guy Jonathan Knight from 快猫短视频 was still waiting outside to interview him . . .
In the US alone there are no fewer than 350 forensic labs devoted to one species, Homo sapiens. Your lab in Ashland Oregon handles the rest. What kinds of cases do you deal with most often?
We see a lot of pieces of animals, loose feathers, strips of hide, hair, a lot of animal products: leather belts and purses-crocodile leather for example-shoes, boots, head dresses, Indian artefacts. You have to connect that piece of animal to the species it came from to determine whether it was legally obtained or imported. The problem is, you don鈥檛 have all the bits of the animal you would need to use a Linnaean type of identification key. So our job is to find new species characteristics that allow us to say 鈥渢his product came from this species and from nothing else in the world鈥�.
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Can you give an example?
With the millennium rush, the biggest job recently has been caviar. The demand has been so high, lots of people are trying to bring in illegal shipments. Say a certain species of sturgeon is protected and has an import limit of 1000 lbs (about 450 kilos) of eggs. Once that quota has been met, these folks still want to make money, so they will call it something else. Or they will bring in roe from more common species, but call it the more expensive kind to cheat their buyers. We take eggs at random and run them through DNA analysis. We can distinguish all 27 species of sturgeon and paddlefish based on variations in their mitochondrial DNA, and if the permit doesn鈥檛 match, the shipment is seized or blocked.
What鈥檚 the most bizarre specimen the lab has ever received for identification?
For years, I fended off people who wanted us to look at samples of Bigfoot. I said, 鈥渋t鈥檚 not illegal to kill Bigfoot, so come see us when it is.鈥� I really regretted saying that a couple of years ago when a county in Washington declared it illegal to kill a Bigfoot. The samples started flowing in. Hair samples, mostly. I had the pleasure of discovering that Bigfoot has a remarkable adaptation to the cold: polyester fur. Of course, I鈥檓 still waiting for someone to send in a tissue sample, or better yet, the whole thing.
Have you broken up any large smuggling rings?
We contributed to breaking up a parrot-smuggling operation a few years ago. To do it, we drew blood from about 900 macaws and parrots, but not until after they drew blood from us. The parrots in question were supposedly bred in captivity. But we suspected they had been captured wild in Australia and smuggled in. We needed blood samples from them and from their supposed parents to prove that they weren鈥檛 related.
So we got the first scarlet macaw, and since he was used to being handled he was quite calm. Then we stabbed a needle in his neck, and suddenly he went for us with talons, beak, everything. We managed to get him back in the cage without losing any fingers, not thinking about the other 899 who were watching . . . We left there completely deafened, torn to shreds and covered with parrot feathers.
At least you managed to prove the birds weren鈥檛 bred in captivity
Actually, we were quite lucky. There was enough evidence in the records that were seized at the facility to convict these guys, so we never needed to finish the testing. I say lucky, because we had a rather daunting task ahead of us. For each offspring, there were 450 possible fathers times 450 possible mothers. We would have had to show that the DNA profile of each baby bird couldn鈥檛 have come from any of the 200 000 or so possible breeding pairs. It would have taken years.
As the only lab of its kind in the world, do you get many requests from other countries?
Yes. We get requests from the 145 signatories of the CITES convention on trade in endangered species, and I would say about 5 per cent of our work is from abroad. The frustrating part is that in many cases, we can鈥檛 help them because we don鈥檛 know enough about the species. To determine the species, you have to have a representative sample as a standard. For example, right now we don鈥檛 know anything about shark fins, but we do know that we are about to get lots in because CITES is about to declare some species endangered as a result of the craze for shark-fin soup. The fins fetch such a high price that some fishermen will poach them and claim they are something else. So we are going to have to learn about sharks in a hurry.
Have there been any cases you haven鈥檛 been able to crack?
Yes, a few. Typically these have to do with dating specimens. Sometimes we are asked to determine if a mounted trophy was killed before or after 1973, when the Endangered Species Act came into force in the US. But in most cases, we can鈥檛 tell when something was killed. We are working on ways to date animals with the use of bomb spikes. Back in 1965, when Cold War atomic testing reached a peak, so did the atmospheric concentration of the radioactive isotope carbon-14. This carbon-14 spike was absorbed into every living thing on Earth. So if we get deer antlers, which grow in seasonal rings like a tree, we just find the ring with the highest ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12, and count the rings outside it. Add that number to 1965, and you have the year of death.
Have you had to invent any technologies to do forensics on wildlife?
All the time. Maybe the most useful thing we have come up with lately is haemoglobin analysis. It turns out that every species has a slightly different version of this oxygen-carrying protein. The two components of the protein, the so-called alpha and beta chains, have unique molecular weights that we can measure in about 10 minutes. We now have 600 species in our haemoglobin database, ranging from bald eagles to grizzly bears, and it鈥檚 still growing.
What benefits does this bring?
It鈥檚 so fast and accurate, it鈥檚 going to astound game wardens, not to mention poachers, that we can analyse some bloody clothing and tell which species a hunter has shot, butchered or carried. Hunters tend not to wash their outer clothing, in the belief that the soap solutions will alert the animals to their presence. We suck up a little blood from 100 spots on a jacket with a little distilled water and an eye dropper, put them into a mass spectrometer, go home, and by the next day we know as many as 100 different species that bled on the poacher over the life of the jacket. That鈥檚 going to seem like magic to some of these guys.
How did you get such an unusual job?
As a biochemistry graduate student in southern California, I discovered I didn鈥檛 want to do basic research. My judo instructor at the time knew this, and since he was a sergeant in the sheriff鈥檚 department, he encouraged me to try forensics. They were desperate. It was the Sixties and they were having a hard time finding science types who didn鈥檛 mind working for the cops. I really liked applying science to solving crimes, but over the next 14 years my work became progressively more depressing. I sifted through grave sites and brought bits of body back. One day, I answered an ad for chief of forensic science at the Fish and Wildlife Service. I got the job and in 1986 we finally got this laboratory built. Today, it is still the only full-service wildlife forensics lab in the world.
Do you hunt?
I haven鈥檛 hunted in 25 years. After working in forensics for so long I prefer to see animals alive than dead. But I鈥檓 not against it. In fact, the hunting community is one of our most powerful allies in fighting poaching. Most hunters are perfectly law-abiding. They love their sport and they want to maintain their right to hunt. So when they see some idiot out there with a box of ammo shooting at everything that moves, that tends to get them upset.
You have also written seven crime novels. What do you like about writing?
I have really developed a fascination with creating what I hope are believable, average Joe, law-enforcement people-not Rambos, just ordinary folks-and then turning loose on them the most vicious killer I can think of.
What鈥檚 your most recent novel about?
It鈥檚 called First Evidence, and it鈥檚 about a forensic scientist who discovers evidence he can鈥檛 explain. It gradually becomes clear that it鈥檚 not of terrestrial origin. Alien visitors have left something behind. The problem is, they want it back.
Where did that idea come from?
It started when I went on a radio show for people who believe in alien visitors. I didn鈥檛 know what I was getting into, but it turns out the host had asked me on because our lab deals with non-human evidence. He wanted me to tell his listeners how they could go about collecting evidence of alien species. And so I explained that since they believe so strongly in these visitors, they can鈥檛 be trusted to collect their own evidence. They would be suspected of altering it. What they need is someone like me, who doesn鈥檛 care if there are aliens running amok on the planet. That led me to ask myself what I would do if I found evidence I couldn鈥檛 explain with all our fancy instruments and techniques. I meant the book to be tongue-in-cheek, but it turned out to be the most chilling novel I鈥檝e ever written. Somehow the fear of the unknown took over.
And when you鈥檙e not solving crimes or writing crime novels, you raise cattle. Why is that?
Water rights, mostly. Here in Oregon, you have to ranch or farm your property to keep your right to use the water on it. And the other reason is I spend the rest of my time at a desk sitting on my rear end, staring at a computer screen. Ranching is a great, if somewhat masochistic, way to keep your blood flowing. And it keeps my head clear. I鈥檝e learnt that when you are sitting on a tractor you focus on the tractor, you don鈥檛 think about the federal government or you will find yourself under the wheels.