Indian Tigers skin flooding blackmarket : TIBET

A disturbing trend in Tibetan communities is driving the illegal tiger and leopard skins trade. In

recent years, Tibetans have been increasingly wearing traditional costumes at their local festivals

that include tiger, leopard and otter skins. The minimal use of tiger and leopard skins on trims of

clothing was once only found in eastern Tibet among a small fraction of the population, but has

now become a fashionable practice among Tibetans from the Tibet Autonomous Region, western

Sichuan, Qinghai, northwest Yunnan and southern Gansu provinces. In Lhasa and other towns in

the Tibetan region, cat skins are openly sold in shops and the mass media is glamorizing Tibetans

wearing wild animal furs in an effort to promote tourism to Tibetan areas. There actions in turn

further driving up demand for skins in Tibetan areas of China.

Nearly 200 tiger skins have been confiscated in China over the past 5 years, coinciding with a rise

in wild tiger poaching in nature reserves in India, Nepal and Southeast Asian countries. Some

experts now put the total number of individual tigers remaining in the wild at between 3,000 and

5,000 individuals.

Through this project, which was generously funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation,

Conservation International (CI) worked with Chinese NGO partners and government agencies to

promote public awareness of the issues surrounding the tiger and leopard skin trade. CI is pleased

to report that we have witnessed a reduction in the use and sale of tiger, leopard and other skins

even within the short time frame that we have been monitoring. CI is one of the few

environmental NGOs that has been working in this region, and our years of work have given us

access to partner with local Tibetan NGOs who are keen to cooperate to reduce and one day

eliminate this problem. CI also attempted to tackle this trade and consumption issue by

increasing the capacity of local communities, NGOs and government agencies. The wildlife trade

is an extremely complex issue; however, in this particular case, the source, transit routes and end

markets are clear, and the Tibetan consumers, who are by nature religious and respectful of all life, were found to be very amenable to stopping their consumption once they understood the

repercussions of their use on wild populations and that purchasing such products was illegal.