Can’t Hide The Stripes By dr.Fourkan Ali The Indian tiger gets a macabre afterlife in Tibet Got Money, Take Tiger is the new India-Tibet equation. This gruesome give-and-take was exposed this week at a screening in Delhi with film clips of the macabre afterlife of tigers. Not in India , but in Tibet . Where the bustling bazaars of Tibet have tiger and leopard skins piled in tall shaky stacks, strung up on clotheslines and peddled by salesmen, some of them Buddhist monks. This even as the Dalai Lama, sheltering in India , beseeches followers to recall Buddha’s mahakaruna. India ‘s tigers becoming Asia ‘s fashion victims was reported by Outlook (Thy Fearful Cemetery, May 9). Fresh evidence points at the rise in tiger skin sales with the sale of Tibetan chubas adorned with tiger, leopard and otter skins. This year’s horse festival in Nagchu had chuba-wearers walking in a parade of animal skins. The footage came from a joint probe by the International Environmental Investigation Agency, EIA, and the Wildlife Protection Society of India, WPSI, from July to September 2005. Belinda Wright, executive director, WPSI, who maintains a meticulous wildlife crime database, states: “The trade is in Tibetan hands, they smuggle, sell, buy and wear skins.” In Litang, 21-year-old Pentsok, just back from India , got a priceless tiger skin as a graduation gift. Asked if his outfit clashed with his Buddhist beliefs, his defence was: “But I didn’t kill it.” In Linxia , China , a single street had 90 stores stuffed with striped and spotted skins ready for sale, while huge stockpiles of tiger skin waited to be tanned. Wright, who posed as a buyer with EIA’s Debbie Banks as her niece, says all the salesmen said tiger and leopard skin supplies came from India . Another 10-minute film, with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), shows a Tibetan sport festival where everyone, from the presiding officials to the tug-of-war team, was wearing animal robes. At a horse festival, men danced in skin skirts decorated with glass beads that filled the eye-sockets of tiger faces. The women swayed in tiger and leopard skin skirts, fitted with otter skin borders. At least 18 otter skins went into making the border for one skirt. “We have pictures of Boudha, a Tibetan colony in Kathmandu , where you see the same skin chubas,” says Ashok Kumar, vice-chairman, WTI. Yet, with most Tibetans admitting that their forefathers didn’t own skin chubas, where is the money coming from? This newfound prosperity comes from the sales of a magic mushroom, cordyceps sinensis, which grows on caterpillars and is found in the Himalayas . Considered an elixir of life, caterpillar fungus, cooked in a duck’s stomach, was served to Ming emperors. Chinese athletes used it as a performance enhancer. Today, it’s a much-vaunted Oriental potion, selling at US $1,000 per kilo. But who will bell this illegal tiger trade before the 2008 Olympics in China ? With a richer Tibet and China buying, India is willfully supplying. Trader Sansar Chand’s son’s diary of 2003 reveals records of sales worth Rs 1.38 crore, with tallies of 654 leopard and 40 tigers skins. The poachers are moving south. Says Kumar: “Traders want quality skins from south India .” Adds another expert: “The skinning, especially the fat removal, is an experts’ job.” Will the government seize the final opportunity to act? Tiger Task Force member Valmik Thapar warns: “We have five more Sariskas in the making, I’ve written to the PM, saying we can’t find a pugmark. For riots we send rapid action forces, to save the tiger we do nothing.” Our crisis solutions are incoherent. Rubbishing the task force’s coexistence formula, senior wildlife biologist Raghunandan Chundawat says: “It’s impossible for a large carnivore like a tiger to coexist with humans. In Delhi , people can’t even live with monkeys.” With addled thinking and the relentless decimation of the jungles, our tiger species seems condemned to life-after-death in China and Tibet .
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:32:00 +0000
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