Governments often have little resource for rangers to protect the stocks of endangered wildlife species in their territories. It is a challenge to patrol expansive tracts of land, and violent confrontation with poachers can regularly occur. It is important to enhance the capacity to map wildlife trafficking routes along a global supply chain, from the poachers to the points of distribution. The CITES treaty established a program for ‘monitoring the illegal killing and hunting of elephants’ (MIKE) to systematically gather information on poaching and trends in the population of elephants in Africa and Asia.