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Tiger-Skin Market in Tibet Flourishing
"We need to start imagining a world without the great predators," Wright said. "It is about to become a reality. I stand before you completely defeated. So little has been done since we exposed this last year. The countries involved _ India, China and Nepal _ have done so little to curb the slaughter. India will soon have no tigers."
"It's just a handful of years before you have none left."
  In this handout photo released Thursday, Sept 27, 2006 by the Wildlife Protection Society of India and Environmental Investigation Agency, a participant clad in tiger and leopard skins looks on with an enforcement officer at Litang Horse Festival in Chinese-controlled-Tibet, Aug. 2006. The tiger population of India will vanish within a handful of years, environmentalists warned Wednesday in a stinging indictment of the governments of India and China whom they hold responsible for the rapid decline in the big cat population. Markets for tiger skins and other pelts are flourishing in Chinese-controlled Tibet a year after they were first exposed, said representatives of two environmental agencies who secretly filmed the trade there. (AP Photo/ Wildlife Protection Society of India and Environmental Investigation Agency, HO) (AP) PHOTOSSave & Share |
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Trade in endangered species, including the Bengal tiger, is banned worldwide under a U.N. convention. But the high premium attached to tiger skins and the use of other tiger body parts in traditional Chinese medicines have created a thriving illegal trade.
Mills said China was considering lifting its ban on the trade of bones from tigers raised on farms for use in medicines. This will undoubtedly fuel the poaching of wild tigers because the animals are expensive to raise on farms and cheap to kill in the forests of India, she warned. And, there's no way to differentiate between the bones, she said.
"This will hammer the last nails in the coffin of wild tigers," Mills said by telephone from Washington, D.C. "There's no question in my mind."
An expose last year by Wright's group and the Environmental Investigation Agency helped curb the use of tiger skins in Tibetan ceremonial dress, particularly after the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, denounced the practice.
Now, she said, Chinese are buying pelts or body parts as souvenirs. "Chinese businessmen are buying it for home decor," Wright said.
The market will continue to expand unless the governments take a strong stand against the trade, said Debbie Banks, head of Environmental Investigation Agency's tiger campaign.
"The trade is run by highly organized networks who have far too much invested to let a few isolated raids and random seizures deter them," she said in a statement.
During the investigation, researchers even came across a Tibetan ceremonial tent made of 108 tiger skins. Its owners said it was several hundred years old, but it had recently been repaired and several of the skins looked new, said researcher Nitin Desai.
"I looked at it and said: That is the end of the tiger _ 108 skins," he said.
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Associated Press Writer Justin Bergman contributed to this report from New York.
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