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I thought this sounded like an interesting project: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/science/tree-dna-database.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=4&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F06%2F22%2Fscience%2Ftree-dna-database.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&login=email&auth=login-email

In theory, DNA tracking should make it possible to crack down on poaching without sweeping legal wood into the same bureaucratic bin.

In theory, yes, but in practice there are still some basic technical hurdles to overcome before DNA-based methods could be used to identify and distinguish different woods in the absence of leaves or other live tissues. https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/rips/fplrip-4714-030-NFGL-wiedenhoeft-hipkins.pdf

Once those problems are solved, there will have to be a lot of research done to identify and compile databases of genetic markers that are specific to the endangered or at-risk species to allow identification and differentiation from other species. And ideally, there would need to be assays developed that are reliable, fast, and simple to perform in the field.

It's all doable in principle, but how long it will take depends mainly on the amount of money that's available to pay for the research and development needed to get there. It would certainly be a good alternative to the current system.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Biggest obstacle in regards to guitars, It is not non destructive. Samples must be removed from said instrument...... And lots of that wood is hiding under a finish of some type.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

DNA persists in a lineage. How will they be able to distinguish if it's a piece of wood that was cut last week or twenty years ago?

I've read about a way to use carbon ratios to date recent objects that ha been applied to ivory. We've all heard of carbon 14 dating for ancient objects. This relies on the fact that historically the ratio of 14C to 12C in the atmosphere has been pretty much constant over time and the 14C breaks down at a known (slow) rate. Living things incorporate carbon in the basic ratio as long as they're alive, and it starts to change after they die. This provides a clock for dating. Since the half life of 14C is about 6000 years, iirc, it's particularly handy for dating stuff that's prehistoric.

As you might expect, we've been messing up the 12C:14C ratio in the atmosphere. It really started to get messed up when atomic bomb testing began, and, more recently, we've been burning so much fossil fuel that it's being pulled around by that as well. Nuclear explosions create large amounts of 14C, while fossil fuels have none to speak of. The result is that ratio has been fluctuating wildly ever since about 1947, when nuclear testing really got going.

The thing is, they've been keeping close track of it all that time. After all, it's good way to find out if somebody set off a nuke. Living things still pick up carbon in the prevailing ratio, and since the breakdown rate is so low it really has not had time to change detectably since 1947. Thus the 12C:14C ratio in a piece of wood or whatever is a reliable way to tell when it died. The article I read on this several years ago described how they used this to find the time of death of a couple of reclusive sisters who were found in their apartment. The insurance companies had to figure out which one should pay off. They use this sometimes with valuable ivory pieces. If the level of 14C is low, they know the elephant was killed before 1947. So far as I know they don't use it to date things more precisely than that at the moment.

This would be a hard thing to do on an existing guitar. You need to run about 5 grams of stuff through a mass spectrometer, so I've read. This could, however, be a useful way for a luthier to establish the pre-CITES status of his stock. The problem is finding somebody who will do the testing, and paying for it.

There may be other forensic methods that could also be used. A friend who works for the water company says they can reliably date ground water by the chemicals in it. If there's DDT, you know it's from after about 1945, and so on. Lots of things are possible.

"In theory, DNA tracking should make it possible to crack down on poaching without sweeping legal wood into the same bureaucratic bin."

I don't think bureaucrats are worried about legislating what is fair, so much as legislating what is easy. The people collecting the data are probably less interested in distinguishing legal from illegal than they are interested in catching poachers.

Keep in mind in all of this that we are, at best, a rounding error in the economy. The needs and practices of even the largest guitar manufacturers differ in many respects from what the real wood users, the furniture and flooring makers, do. Individual luthiers are weird, even compared with a company like Martin. When the laws are made the people writing them don't take us into account because, for all intents and purposes, we don't exist.

Several years ago a representative of the Fish and Wildlife Service gave a talk about the Lacey Act at a luthier's convention. Somebody asked him what to do about wood that they'd had for ten or fifteen years. He said that nobody holds wood for that long. On seeing the reaction of the audience, he asked how many people there had wood they'd bought more than ten years before: everybody raised their hands. He was flabbergasted. The two-year phase in period that they'd written into the law which was sufficient for the big boys to use up old stock and get current with paperwork was useless to us, a thought that never entered the minds of the folks who made the law.

That's really funny...