Poachers using science papers to target newly discovered species | Environment | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/01/poachers-using-science-papers-to-target-newly-discovered-species
Journals begin withholding locations after warnings the data is helping smugglers drive lizards, snakes and frogs to ‘near-extinction’
The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature does not oblige scientists to provide GPS coordinates for newly discovered species, but many do as an act of empirical completion.
Even when species locations are not precisely mapped, black market traders can often track them down, using local contacts and big cash offers that turn the heads of poor farmers.
Just four months after Zootaxa published discovery information about a new leaf-tailed gecko in Madagascar last summer, the animal began appearing in Europe.