range and now appears to be targeted at yet another site—the last remaining stronghold of the species in the Kingdom.
Other confiscated animals were assigned to a genetic cluster (at K 4) that was not represented elsewhere in our data-set. Therefore, the origin of those animals could be only speculated upon. Since Jizan is close to the Yemen border, one likely explanation would be that animals were caught in Yemen (Fig. 1). The situation for gazelles in Yemen is unclear (Mallon & Al-Safadi 2001) and included samples obtained from Yemen were collected close to the Saudi border. Although gazelles in Yemen are thought to be rare, small populations may still exist (Mallon & Al-Safadi 2001) and live capture in those populations is also highly likely. Trading of wildlife is very common in Yemen since impoverished locals catch wildlife opportunistically (Stanton 2009). It is easily conceivable that a certain variety of wildlife (including gazelles) is regularly smuggled across the border into Saudi Arabia to achieve higher prices.
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