‘Tigers still killed for sale in China’

Killing of Asian big cats for sale in China continues unabated even though the number of body parts available in Chinese shops has gone done dramatically since 2005, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 18, 2008, 02:18:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Killing of Asian big cats for sale in China continues unabated even though the number of body parts available in Chinese shops has gone done dramatically since 2005, an international investigation has revealed.

Among the body parts found for sale in Linxia of Gansu Province of China was a tiger skin originating from India, the investigation by Environment Investigation Agency (EIA), an international NGO, has found.

The investigation disclosed at the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Geneva on Thursday said that 13 snow leopard and leopard skins and one tiger skin were found to be on sale in one week of investigations in Linxia. Also found were five pieces of leopard skin trim and a piece of tiger skin trim.

The number has gone down dramatically since 2005 when EIA found 60 snow leopard skins and 163 leopard skins on sale in Linxia. In subsequent years following international pressure on China to curb the trade and a call by Dalai Lama to Tibetans to shun animal skins, the number of skins found had declined.

This year the investigators found that the sale continues unabated with the traders getting wiser by not selling the illegal body parts to foreigners and getting tip-off from Chinese forest bureau officials about any suspected raid.

To avoid detection, the Asian big cat skins were being sold only to Chinese customers, who don’t complain to forest bureau officials, the EIA told CITES. Also, the skins are not on public display, as it used to be earlier. “They are available only on demand,” the EIA investigation report said. The EIA also said that the same old five traders, with whom illegal skins were found in the past few years, continue to run the trade. The skins offered for sale in 2006 and 2008 were different, indicating that they are getting fresh supply of prohibited animal body parts.

In view of the findings, the EIA has asked CITES to determine future benchmarks for countries dealing with Asian big cats to determine enforcement effectiveness in future. Countries like India should be asked to provide details of pro-active strategies been developed to apply intelligence-led enforcement to combat the trans-national criminal networks, the EIA said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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