From traditional soup to the hottest pets to traditional medicine, illegal wildlife products make up one of the biggest black markets in the world. Valued at billions of dollars, the illicit trade is undoing decades of conservation work and undermining economic development and national security in countries around the world. But new technologies are being developed every day to combat the poaching and trafficking of wildlife.

To encourage innovation, the U.S. Agency for International Development, in partnership with the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring organization, launched the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge. It’s a competition to reward creative solutions that use science and technology to fight wildlife