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Skin and Bones
Nearly
20 years ago suspicion arose that tigers were being poached in India
for bones for use in Chinese medicine. In the early 1990s that was
confirmed by seizures in the world-famous Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve,
when many of its well-known tigers disappeared. The skin trade, which
was at its height in the 1960s, before India’s tigers were
protected, appeared to have died down (but not ended) as a result of
the launch of Project Tiger, and the impact of the Convention on
International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES), which cut demand in the western world for skins for carpets and wall hangings, as well as for
coats.
For illegal traders it was more difficult to indulge in clandestine
trade in skins rather than in bones, particularly because tiger bones
can be concealed in the legal trade in animal bones for fertiliser and
other uses. The new emphasis on bones was shown when tiger remains
found in forests often included skins, while bones had been taken.
Seizures in recent years, however, have increasingly included skins of tigers and leopards. In fact, skins of leopards,
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