Species and origin determinations of an ivory chess set: An application of the ivory workflow implemented by California’s Wildlife Forensic Laboratory

Despite the prevalence of elephant poaching and ivory trafficking, domestic and international ivory markets around the world are slowly closing due to increased education and enforcement efforts. This includes California’s ivory market in 2016 after the passage of Assembly Bill 96 (AB 96), which prohibits the purchase, sale, offer for sale, possession, or importation with intent to sell, of ivory from elephant, mammoth, and mastodon along with other non-proboscidean species. To assist with enforcement efforts, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Wildlife Forensic Laboratory (CDFW-WFL) has created and implemented a scientific workflow to taxonomically identify, geographically assign, and age California’s seized ivory. Here we discuss the application of this scientific workflow to a 32-piece ivory chess set, which was purchased in 1969 and donated to and examined by the WFL in 2021. Genetic data revealed 11 unique haplotypes and 19 unique genotypes, suggesting a diverse set of African elephants from numerous locations in Africa were used to assemble the chess set. Stable isotope data corroborated these findings and radiocarbon dating suggested the ivory used to carve these chess pieces grew approximately 6 years prior to the chess set being purchased. Our results indicate that the use of a variety of scientific techniques provides a wide scope of information; furthermore, taxonomically identifying, geographically assigning, and aging the ivory chess set demonstrates to law enforcement officers how our ivory workflow can assist them in coordinating efforts locally, nationally, and internationally to help stop the illegal importation of ivory into California.