The Interpol puts the trade in illegal wildlife products at $12 billion a year. Home to half of the world's tigers, India is keeping the supply line going. The rhino and the elephant apart, it is the big cat that pays the maximum in blood to keep this industry booming. Although tigers in captivity—about 20,000 in US ranches and another 1,500 in China’s tiger farms—often end up as trade material, the primary source of the trade has been wild tigers. In the international market, a tiger fetches at least $10,000, but broken into body parts, the value can soar to $50,000. Every bit of a tiger is in demand—the brain as cure to pimples and laziness, its whiskers for toothaches, the nose and eyes for epilepsy and malaria, the humerus bone for ulcers, rheumatism and typhoid. Tiger skin can cost up to $15,000. Tiger bones and body parts cost twice or three times as much as a tiger skin. In Hong Kong black markets, vendors sell powdered tiger humorous bone for over $3600/kg. In Seoul, it sells for $3000/kg. In Taiwan, a pair of eyes cost between $175-250. Tiger penis is used in a soup as an aphrodisiac—a bowl of the ‘‘first boil'' comes for nothing less than $100 while subsequent boils cost less. In Taiwan, a ‘‘rich'' bowl of tiger penis soup goes for a hefty $320. Finally, after about five to six boils, the penis is dried up and sold for anything between $200-500. In the late 1990s, a Japanese manufacturer was producing a brand of Tiger penis pills which were on sale for over $27,000 per bottle. China is the biggest producer of tiger bone pills and medicinal wine, but such medicines are also made in factories in South Korea and other South-East Asian countries.
Dealer price for raw tiger bone is estimated to be between $140 and $370/kg, depending on the size and quality of the bones. Till recently, the retail price of processed and powdered tiger bone in Singapore was over $4,000/kg. USING tiger parts for medicinal purposes is not limited to Asia. WWF investigation in England of Chinese chemists, craft shops and supermarkets in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool showed that a number of shops sold products claiming to contain tiger derivatives. It's prevalent in many US states, particularly in Texas, primarily among the Chinese expats. Tigers are also valued as exotic pets. In 1998, WWF found two tiger cubs on open sale at a pet shop in Jakarta. Given such demand, it's little wonder that tigers are facing the worst ever crisis in India. In 10 years between 1994 and 2003, the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) has recorded 684 cases of tiger poaching here. This excludes, due to insufficient poaching evidence, a large number of tigers that were ‘‘found dead''. In the last two years, skin seizures in India, Nepal and China indicate that another 221 tigers were poached. The Customs authorities multiply known offences by ten to estimate the size of an illegal trade. So even a very conservative estimate would suggest that the tiger and leopard trade in the subcontinent deals with at least 1,000 big cats a year.
Following strong legislation in different countries, the international tiger trade has been operating almost exclusively through ‘‘an army of ants''— large numbers of individuals smuggling small volumes of goods through a range of channels.
‘‘It is a thriving, uncontrolled market, which may explain the increased poaching of tigers in India that has left at least one tiger reserve devoid of tigers and four others almost empty. Huge seizures of tiger, leopard and otter skins in India and Nepal indicate the existence of highly organized criminal networks behind the skin trade. They operate across borders, smuggling skins from India through Nepal into China, and continue to evade the law,'' says Belinda Wright, executive director, WPSI. The modus operandi has been simple. One of the country dealers plant operators with a budget of about Rs 1 lakh in a village in or around a tiger forest. He spends months there, familiarizing himself and winning the confidence of the community and eventually luring a few villagers to poach a big cat for as little as Rs 15-25,000. Once the kill is made, the skin is sent to local tanneries—the ones in Kanpur and Allahabad have special expertise—and finally it reaches the kingpin. It's difficult to transport other body parts which are often dispatched separately. Once the kingpin has a good stock, consignments are sent across the porous border to Nepal, Tibet or Bangladesh. At this level, the country dealer earns between Rs 1,50,000 to Rs 2,00,000 depending on the size and quality of the skin. Bones, about 12 kg per tiger, fetches another Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000. The foreign dealer, in turn, earns at least $10,000 per tiger product from the retailers. And then the products hit the retail market, spinning mega bucks. THE findings of the recent joint investigation by London's Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) and WPSI in Tibet and China points out that the supply line from India is very much active. ‘‘In the last five years, the international community has seen the trade in tiger and leopard skins spiral out of control. If this trade continues unabated for another five years, it will be the end for the wild tiger. It is imperative that the Indian and Chinese governments stop this trade now, before time runs out,'' says Debbie Banks, EIA's senior campaigner.
The Tiger Task Force report talks about a bunch of radical long term measures. But India won't have too many tigers left to be benefited by those steps if we don't act now. The Centre must address the issue at both ends. While bilateral talks with our neighbors and better vigilance at the border are necessary to curb the trade, immediate action is necessary to protect the tiger in its habitat against poaching.
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