In a rare success for India's embattled conservationists, police in the city of Allahabad raided a meeting Tuesday of suspected poachers, traders, and couriers who were negotiating over three tiger pelts and skeletons, senior police official Arvind Chaturvedi said.Conservationists say the killing of tigers for their pelts and body parts to supply the Chinese traditional medicine market is a main factor in the sharp decline in wild tigers in recent years.
There are no more than 1,500 tigers in India's reserves and jungles—down from about 3,600 just five years ago and an estimated hundred thousand a century ago, according to the Indian government.
Police said they received a tip-off from conservation groups that Shabbir Hasan Qureshi, an alleged trader in banned animal parts, was taking part in the meeting.
"He was the biggest buyer of tiger parts in India and used to sell them off to the Chinese traditional medicinal market," said Belinda Wright, the director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
"The operation is a major breakthrough against wildlife crime," she said, adding that her group and several others had been monitoring Qureshi since he was linked to a police seizure of four tiger skins, 70 leopard pelts, and 221 black buckskins in a village near Allahabad in 2000.
Allahabad is about 360 miles (580 kilometers) southeast of New Delhi.
FUll Story
1 comment:
Really? over 100,000 a century ago? Sure that's not spooky rural Indian witch doctor myth?
Post a Comment