China and India try to protect the tiger

1995/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ekologia

Worldwide there are between 5,000 and 7,000 tigers, of which 3,750 reside in India. China, for its part, is the largest consumer of tiger products, most of these products, used in traditional medicine. But as in China there is no tiger, they supply secret hunters working in India. As a result, the tiger population in India has decreased considerably.

Faced with this situation, India has been very concerned and the two countries have joined forces to deal with tiger traffic. In early March, India's Minister of the Environment, Kamal Nath, and Chinese Environment Minister, Song Jian, signed an agreement to combat poaching, smuggling and tigers.

In the opinion of Mahendra Vyas, lawyer of the Supreme Court of Delhi, the aim of this political agreement is to turn the tiger into a focus of attention and draw attention to the problem. In the black market of the Far East a tiger could cost 60,000 dollars. Currently, the demand for tiger products is still high, which generates confidential traffic.