IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Shepherd, C.R.; Magnus, N. | |
| Nowhere to hide: The Trade in Sumatran Tiger | |
| 2004 Full Book | |
The Tiger _Panthera tigris _is today an Endangered species (Anon., 2003a), and over the past decade conservationists have considered illegal international trade in Tiger bone for traditional Asian medicines as the primary force driving Tigers toward extinction. TRAFFIC has led the way in helping the conservation community understand the scope, volume and workings of illegal Tiger trade_. Killed for a Cure: A Review of the Worldwide Trade in Tiger Bone _(Mills and Jackson, 1994) was the first comprehensive documentation of the extent of the trade. This report helped motivate countries, organizations and individuals around the world to focus on Tiger conservation and shutting down medicinal trade in Tiger bone. Progress toward implementation of new trade controls was reviewed in a second TRAFFIC report (Mainka 1997). In the late 1990s, TRAFFIC commissioned surveys around the world to evaluate markets for Tiger bone and other Tiger parts and products, and this was published as _Far from a Cure: The Tiger Trade Revisited _(Nowell, 2000). _Killed for a Cure _indicated Indonesia as a leading global source of Tiger bone from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, despite this trade being illegal and there being no official Indonesian records for it, based on import statistics from South Korea (Mills and Jackson, 1994_). Far from a Cure _found evidence of substantial progress toward eliminating markets for Tiger bone in many countries, but Indonesia was highlighted as a supplying market for Tiger parts and products where illegal trade was still carried out relatively openly (Nowell, 2000). As a next step, TRAFFIC undertook extensive market surveys in Sumatra to describe and document current illegal Tiger trade. This report summarizes Sumatran Tiger conservation efforts, provides background on Sumatran Tiger trade, and then draws together data from TRAFFIC surveys and a number of other sources to analyze poaching, the role of Tiger conflict with humans, and current illegal markets for Tiger parts and products in Sumatra. The state of Tigers in Sumatran zoos is also examined. The population of Sumatran Tigers _Panthera tigris sumatrae _is Critically Endangered (Anon, 2003a). In the late 1990s it was estimated that there were as few as 400- 500 left in the wild (Seidensticker _et al._, 1999). By providing the first in-depth examination of illegal Tiger trade in Sumatra, this report aims to help the Indonesian government and conservation community to better enforce hunting and trade bans, and ensure that Sumatran Tigers do not follow in the tracks of the now-extinct Tigers of Bali and Java. |
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