Poachers set to cash in on Year of the Tiger
By MATT WADE HERALD CORRESPONDENT
December 18, 2009 RANTHAMBORE, Rajasthan: India’s wild tigers already compete for survival with nearly 1.2 billion people. But conservationists warn that a new threat looms – the Chinese New Year. February 14 marks the start of the Year of the Tiger and there are fears this will fuel the illicit trade in the body parts of India’s magnificent big cats. Demand for tiger parts for use in traditional Chinese medicines has contributed to a decline in Indian tiger numbers. Now a report by a British non-government organisation, the Environmental Investigation Agency, says tiger-skin dealers in China are expecting higher profits because ”everyone will want a tiger skin” next year. ”Traders were aware of the scarcity of wild tigers and of the forthcoming Chinese Year of the Tiger and view this as an opportunity to increase profits,” the report says. Conservationists have accused China of not doing enough to stamp out trade in tiger parts and the Indian Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, has made no secret of his concern, stating that the new year posed a ”threat to tigers in India”. In August, he asked China for more help in cracking down on the trade in tiger parts. After the then Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi, launched Project Tiger in 1973, tiger numbers rose steadily, from about 1800 in the early 1970s to more than 4000 in 1989. But then manufacturers of traditional Chinese medicines turned to India for supplies because China’s tiger population had been devastated, said Belinda Wright, a tiger conservationist and founder of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. ”It’s been a dreadful, dreadful battle since the early 1990s,” she said. ”What changed was this huge demand for tiger parts from China.” …
