This audio feature explains how science and the law help the indigenous San people benefit from a traditional remedy.

http://www.scidev.net/global/medicine/feature/traditional-medicine-modern-times-facts-figures.html

Image by Anita Makri

Rewards from modern uses of South Africa’s buchu plant

Ivory is a valuable commodity on the black market, encouraging the killing of elephants for their tusks. Poaching has many costs to local communities, including a high human toll, as armed poachers kill not just the endangered animals but also anyone standing in their way. 

One major hurdle to being able to stop the slaughter of elephants is that poaching patterns can be complex and difficult to pin down as major ivory seizures can contain tusks from different areas. But much like detectives use DNA from a crime scene to identify potential suspects from a genetic database, wildlife investigators are now using genetic fingerprinting to figure out where elephant poaching is happening. This audio feature examines how mapping slight differences in the DNA of elephant groups all over Africa is helping investigators detect poaching hotspots and protect the mammals from the ivory trade.

http://www.scidev.net/global/conservation/multimedia/genetic-maps-ivory-black-market-poaching-elephant.html

Genetic maps target ivory black market

This week's podcast focuses on women's empowerment and child nutrition. Special guest Dr. Scott Ickes discusses his work on AidData's working paper 7

Go to AidData.org/blog to read this week's blog post

Music from Today's Episode:

Q - Inara George
Intermission A - Tab

Episode 6 : Empowering Women Through Data

AidData presents a six-episode podcast series to take you past the maps and dashboards on our website to the human stories at the heart of our research. 


Episode 6 : Empowering Women Through Data

AidData

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