I’m a little late in posting about this story that came out in the Guardian on New Year’s Day.

The gist of the piece is that the journal Zootaxa has published recent papers omitting the data on where the described species may be found. This is to deter impact to these newly described organisms, after several incidences where animals were depleted or found for offer in the pet trade. This goes to show that seemingly the most innocuous and standard scientific practices (in this case, the standard documentation and provision of data surrounding the description of newly identified species) may still warrant ethical considerations.

This also represents an interesting and alarming co-evolution of illegal or unregulated poaching practices. But this is just a drop in the poaching bucket, as poachers have already clearly upped their game in recent years, arming themselves with high-tech equipment like night vision goggles. However, there is a whole range of combatant technologies emerging for use in the anti-poaching effort being billed as “smarter ways to fight wildlife crime.”