"DNA becomes really important if it is just a part of an animal or a product of an animal or a very young animal, like an egg, so it is not well-developed enough to be morphologically identified," she said.

"Morphologically means using its own external characters, which tends not to exist in parts of animals."

Dr Johnson says DNA technology can help identify what the animal is and therefore whether it is illegal to bring into the country or not.

"In those kinds of cases, DNA allows you to get a species identification and then we are able to then look at whether or not that animal is prohibited from trade or limited on its trade," she said.

Dr Johnson says birds and reptiles are the most common animal illegally trafficked.

"Australia has a very unique fauna, so a lot of our animals are quite desirable to be exported out of the country and also there are certain groups of collectors of types of animals that likes to bring them into the country," she said.

"They would be exotics, and obviously Australia again having unique fauna, we don't want exotic animals coming in an unregulated way because they can be a threat to our own biodiversity."

Dr Johnson says DNA identification has led to prosecutions.

"We have been involved in several prosecutions. One involving bird egg smuggling. That was the case where someone, an individual was bringing bird eggs in and in this case they had actually come from Thailand," she said.

"So that was an extra risk, because Thailand is a listed bird flu or was a known country to have bird flu, and in that case it actually resulted in two years in jail and a $10,000 fine."

DNA evidence is also used to identify if shark fins have been illegally traded.

"That is actually from seizures within Australia, so state fisheries, agencies will seize shark fins that are brought in on a boat," she said.

"In Australia it is illegal to just have the fins. You have to have the entire shark intact with its fins on and that is because of cases where sharks are caught, the fins are taken off and the shark is dumped at sea.

"In a lot of cases where fins are seized, we use DNA to identify what species they came from, because it can be very hard even for an expert to be able to identify the species that that fin was taken from.

"So by doing that we are able to give the agencies a good idea of the type of species that have been taken in those cases."