Before they're Gone: Fighting the Illegal Wildlife Trade

The Naked Scientists Podcast

Dr Chris Smith

Natural Sciences, Science, Science Radio, Naked Scientists, Health & Fitness, Engineering, Medicine, Technology, Life Sciences

4.6 • 958 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2018

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's one of the largest criminal industries in the world, worth billions and responsible for thousands of murders, but can we win the fight against the illegal wildlife trade? We speak to the foot soldiers of this battle: a scientist whose new techniques led to the capture of some dangerous criminals, a member of Border Force who intercepts ivory as it enters the country and the man with a gun facing off directly with the poachers. We also hear about the animals at risk, and why time is running out. Plus, a revelation from the early Universe which might change how we do physics today, why... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Transcript

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0:00.0	I have you loud and clear.
0:03.0	Hello.
0:04.0	Hello.
0:05.0	Welcome.
0:06.0	Science and that is the same
0:10.0	physics, medicine, nature, or space, time, a brain, life, the universe.
0:15.0	Hello, this week we're investigating the billion pound criminal industry putting many species
0:21.0	at risk of extinction, and that's the illegal wildlife trade.
0:24.4	I'll be taking a trip to Heathrow Airport to look at some of the things people have tried to
0:28.0	smuggle around the world and Chris meets a man in the African Bush with a very big gun.
0:33.0	Before that though, news of a breakthrough in understanding mysterious dark matter in the universe
0:38.0	and why an unexpected rainstorm on Earth means finding life on Mars might be more likely than we first thought.
0:45.4	I'm Chris Smith.
0:46.5	I'm Georgia Mills and this is the Naked Scientists.
0:49.5	The Naked Scientists podcast is powered by UKfast.co.uk.
0:55.0	Up first this week a discovery that space scientists are calling revolutionary
1:05.7	because it gives us new insights into a mysterious substance that we can't
1:09.4	see or measure but which nevertheless accounts for a quarter of the mass out there in space.
1:15.5	This material is called dark matter.
1:18.0	We think it's there because we can see the influence of its gravity, but it doesn't seem to
1:21.7	interact with anything in any other way, or does it?
1:25.7	Because two scientific papers in the journal Nature have now put forward evidence that perhaps
	...

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