Poaching and trade in tiger products.

Poaching and illegal trade in tiger products are widespread throughout tiger range. By their clandestine nature, they are are difficult to detect. Unless there are sufficient forest guards, tiger carcasses are unlikely to be found and soon vanish. Poachers may bury remains, including skins, if bones are the target. While skins can be easily identified, only a handful of experts can identify bones, which can be readily transported and mistaken for other (legitimate) animal bones, in which there is normal trade.

The instances of poaching that come to light can be considered just the tip of the iceberg, which suggests that at least five or six times as many tigers are poached as instances known. Furthermore, the damage from poaching is not limited to the single animal involved. The killing of a tigress may mean the loss of up to four young cubs, as happened in Russia in 1992 (Quigley 1993). In this case, the cubs were recovered, but two died and the other two were necessarily kept in captivity. The death of a male tiger may lead to territorial battles between other males, resulting in infanticide and poor cub survival for even two years. This has been documented in Nepal's Chitwan National Park (Smith and McDougal, in press).Where a few tigers survive in an isolated population (a situation which exists in many places) the loss of just a few individuals, especially if they are females, could push the population below the survival level.

Little documentation of recovery of skins or bones is available, but V. Thapar (1993 pers. comm.) has collected preliminary information from Indian wildlife preservation authorities in 12 of India's 24 states and Delhi Territory showing 76 skins or skeletons recovered between 1988 and 1992.This figure could indicate the loss of up to 400 tigers in the period. In Nepal, a number of seizures of tiger bones have occurred, including sacks of bones in a post office (Martin 1992; C. McDougal pers.comm.). Tiger products have been found in markets in Laos (Martin 1992), Vietnam (IPPL 1992; P. Lawton, pers.comm.) and Thailand (Rabinowitz 1992).

Outside tiger range countries, large numbers of bones and other tiger products have been found in Taiwan (Nowell 1993) and South Korea (J. Mills 1993). Medicinal plaster, labelled as containing tiger bone, has been found in Geneva (P. Jackson, pers. comm.) and Rome (M. Pani, pers.comm.); tiger bone wine in London (Nicholson 1992); and a tincture in a Birmingham supermarket (Times 1992). Some of these products, however, have been found by the US Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory to contain no bone of any kind.