TIGERS AT RISK, U.N. WARNS-4/12/00-Kieran Murray
NAIROBI- India's tiger population could be all but wiped out unless drastic steps are taken to stop poaching and the illegal trade in tiger skins and bones, a U.N. team of wildlife experts said yesterday.
The team's report said India was failing to protect its tigers through inefficiency and indifference, allowing well-organized poaching gangs to hunt down the majestic animals.
''The danger is that tigers will be reduced to such small numbers that they will be left basically in zoos, that wild tiger populations would come under such pressure that they may become unviable genetically," said John Sellar, one of the report's authors.
He played down earlier reports that India's Bengal tigers might disappear altogether within 10 years. But he said smaller populations in China and Indonesia were in clear danger of extinction and India's were ''under considerable risk" of eventually being confined to a few small reserves.
Indian officials slammed the report.
P. K. Sen, director of India's Project Tiger, said the main threat comes from heavy consumer demand in more than 100 countries.
''If consumer countries stopped consuming, then our tigers are 90 per cent safe," he said.
There is a large international market for tiger skins as rugs, ornaments or trophies, and tiger bones are used in traditional Chinese medicine as a cure for rheumatism. Its teeth and claws are sold as amulets, or charms, and its penis is used as an ingredient in tonics to boost virility.
Team urges India
to set up special unit
to tackle poaching The U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) last year ordered an investigation into the tiger trade
and focused on India - which has about half the world's remaining
6,000 tigers - as well as Japan and China, traditionally the
largest markets for tiger products. Some 100,000 tigers roamed
Asia in the last century.
''There is very little evidence of a co-ordinated, modern and professional approach to law enforcement, either in anti-poaching operations or in the investigation of wildlife crime and illicit trading," the CITES team said in a report to a conference of its 150 member states in Nairobi.
The team urged India to set up a special unit to tackle poaching and, if it fails to do so, it should be hit with trade sanctions.
Meanwhile, another report released yesterday by the World Wide Fund for Nature (World Wildlife Fund in Canada) and the World Conservation Union said the poaching and illegal trade in wild tigers continues despite a recent drop in the consumption of tiger-bone medicines.
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