Poachers held with tiger skins

NEW DELHI: When wildlife toughs get going, going gets tough against them too.
As a follow-up of the heat on poachers in India, Royal Nepal Army (RNA), on September 2, nabbed three of them in Rasuwa district of the Himalayan Kingdom. The district borders Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) of China. The poachers were two Nepali nationals and a Tibetan.
Skins of five tigers, 36 leopards, 238 otters and 113 kg mix of tiger and leopard bones were seized from their possession.
According to New Delhi-based Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), which grilled the poachers at Kathmandu, the accused were carrying the wildlife articles to deliver them to a trader based in Bouddha at Kathmandu. They were routed to the TAR via Kathmandu, Bidur, Dhunche and Syabru.
The seizure was the third major haul in Nepal this year. Feedback from the RNA has alarmed wildlife caretakers in India. Despite constitution of many bodies at national and state levels and their hyped deliberations and the Prime Minister's intervention, poaching is going unabated in the country.
According to an official in the Northern Indian region of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), this monsoon witnessed unusual rise in poaching and wildlife trophy trading incidents. The seizure last week at Kathmandu is not being looked at in isolation.
On August 10 last, in the second major seizure again at Kathmandu, skins of a tiger, leopard and 103 pieces of assorted tiger and leopard bones were seized. Arrested poachers were from Bawaria community of Haryana.
In April this year, the first seizure was reported in Nepal's Tatopani, in which two tiger skins were seized, when were being carried to the TAR, reported WPSI in a news brief.
Poachers seem to have put a running challenge to wildlife authorities. Even recently, the CITES moved quickly to alert customs' Inland Containers Depot (ICD) in Tughlakabad about import of shahtoosh wool bales for weavers in Jammu and Kashmir.
On its tip-off, customs seized 184 bales in which were stashed shahtoosh wool passed as sheepwool.
Tests at Dehra Dun-based Wildlife Insititute of India (WII) confirmed what CITES feared most. Said an MoEF expert, "The bales of wool had not only shatoosh, but also one of rare variety. That apart, it was the first time an export of shahtoosh was despatched from Pakistani port, Karachi, and not from the TAR region."
MoEF mandarins smell a hand of Sansar Chand-associate Pema Tinley in the sordid saga of poaching and trade. According to WOSI intelligence reports, Pema at present is active in Indo-Tibet border areas.
Though the mandarins in customs are ducking questions about the ICD haul, the WII report spills the beans. On repeat queries over phones both customs chief Sahib Singh and his deputy joint commissioner AK Madan denied having seized the consignment. Madan handled the entire seizure operation on the CITES tip-off.
The MoEF officials were surprised when the trader approached them seeking to define the shatoosh content in percentage terms in the chargesheet, and said, "If percentage terms is mentioned in the report they might workout tricks in the courts to bail themselves out".