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India's population of endangered Bengal tigers could be wiped out within a decade unless the government cracks down on the illegal trade in tiger skins, conservationists warned on Thursday.
Wildlife groups said they had found scores of shops openly selling tiger, leopard and otter skins during a recent visit to Tibet and others provinces of western China.
Video footage shot by the Environmental Investigation Agency and the Wildlife Protection Society of India showed traders in Lhasa, Tibet, offering fresh Bengal tiger skins and hundreds of leopard skins for sale.
Bengal tigers are mainly found in the Indian subcontinent, and the activists said the traders told them all the skins had been smuggled in from India.
A new tiger habitat in Tripura?
Trading in endangered species, including the Bengal tiger, is banned under the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species or CITES.
But the high premium attached to tiger skins, and the use of other tiger body parts in traditional Chinese medicine, have resulted in a thriving illegal trade.
Increasingly, affluent Tibetans are also adorning their traditional robes and capes with tiger and leopard skins, Belinda Wright of the Environmental Investigation Agency said on Thursday.
"It is a thriving market, which may explain the increased poaching of tigers in India," said Wright.
Poaching has caused India's tiger population to drop sharply and seriously threatens the species' survival. The United States National Geographic Society estimated in 2001 that only 5,000 to 7,000 Bengal or Indian tigers existed in the wild, about half of them in India.
However, conservationists believe the official estimates of tigers in the wild are grossly exaggerated and that the true figure may be closer to 2,000 or less.
Earlier this year, following complaints by wildlife groups, India's federal agencies investigated and found that all the tigers at Sariska, one of the country's main reserves, had disappeared.