Organised crime syndicates have upped their game and "gone cyber" to ensure they can continue to fuel the world's global illegal wildlife trade. In a document released yesterday in Johannesburg at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, experts sounded the alarm over the increased use of the internet to trade illegally in wildlife.But conservationists are also using everything from nano-technology, barcoding and micro-satelliteing of species DNA, to chemical profiling in the fight against wildlife crime.The Combating Wildlife Cybercrime report paints a bleak picture for law enforcement officers.An Interpol operation found 660 advertisements of ivory items valued at €1.45-million (R22.2-million) for sale on 61 internet auction sites in nine European countries, the report read."In November 2014 an investigation found 33,006 endangered animals and wildlife products were found to be for sale in 9,482 adverts. They were worth a minimum of $10.7-million (R145.9-million)."The investigation looked at the trade in endangered wildlife taking place on 280 online marketplaces in 16 countries. Of the advertisements, 54% were for live animals, and 46% for animal parts and products."Richard Thomas, spokesman for the international wildlife trafficking organisation, Traffic, said syndicates were increasingly turning to the web."The internet allows people to carry out transactions without the need for face-to-face meetings, using couriers to get products between buyer and sellers."In 2012 we noticed an alarming spike in coded adverts in China, which were found to be used to conduct this trade. At the height of the spike there were 60,000 adverts a month which were taken out to illegally sell wildlife," Thomas said.Meanwhile, forensic experts want to motivate for science over brute force in the fight against organised crime syndicates behind wildlife crime."Forensics can help distinguish the difference between legally and illegally traded animals, establish the source of animal seizures, and map out intricate trade routes," said Dr Rob Ogden, programme director of the wildlife forensics network Trace...