Conservationists hail plan to protect tigers

New Delhi: Conservationists welcomed an Indian Government plan to create eight new reserves to protect the country's dwindling tiger population, and called yesterday for more action to prevent illegal trading in tiger parts.

It will take five years to set up the new reserves, which will cover an area of more than 31,000 square kilometres at a cost to taxpayers of Rs6 billion (Dh561 million), the government's Tiger Project announced on Tuesday.

Private groups will also contribute funds. New estimates suggest India's wild tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411, the Tiger Project said.

Dwindling numbers

Belinda Wright, director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, said the government may have overestimated the number of tigers in 2003, but the falling numbers were still shocking.

Meanwhile, tiger teeth, claws, skin and whiskers are being openly sold in Sumatra, Indonesia, threatening the island's big cats with extinction, a report by wildlife monitoring group Traffic said yesterday.

A survey of 326 goldsmiths, traditional Chinese medicine outlets and souvenir and antique shops carried out by the British-based group in 2006, estimated at least 23 tigers had been killed to produce the contraband products it found.

"This is down from an estimate of 52 killed per year in 1999-2002," said Julia Ng, Programme Officer with Traffic Southeast Asia and lead author of the report, The Tiger Trade Revisited in Sumatra, Indonesia.

"Sadly, the decline in availability appears to be due to the dwindling number of tigers left in the wild," she said.

Hit by forest clearances, killings due to human-tiger conflict, and illegal hunting for the trade in their parts and derivatives, the Sumatran tiger, Panthera tigris sumatrae, numbers have halved from an estimated 1,000 in the 1970s.

Illegal trade: Demand for tiger parts

- The largest of all cats, the tiger is one of the most fearsome predators in the world. It can weigh up to 450 kg and measure around 3 metres from nose to the tip of the tail.

- Threats to tigers include destruction of their habitat and poaching, demand for tiger parts such as skins and bones for traditional medicine.

- Although the trade in tiger parts is illegal, a single animal skin can fetch up to $50,000 on the international black market.