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Burmese Tribesmen Poaching Tigers in Tibet NEW DELHI, India, June 21, 2002 (ENS) - Tigers are being killed by poachers from Burma in the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and in the adjacent forests of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, according to American wildlife biologist George Schaller. Returning to India on a personal trip after several years away, Dr. Schaller was travelling with a group of U.S. wildlife researchers. He met Ashok Kumar, Vivek Menon and Aniruddha Mookerjee of the Wildlife Trust of India on April 16 for a discussion of Indian conservation issues. Dr. Schaller said that Lisu and Mishmi tribesmen from the borders of Arunachal Pradesh in India and the Kachin hills in Burma are continually moving into India and Tibet to illegally hunt the remaining populations of tigers in that region.
"I visited Kachin on an invitation to help the government of Burma set up wildlife sanctuaries in that region. I spoke to people there and saw it happening," Schaller said. Kachin State is one of the most sparsely populated, densely forested, and inaccessible parts of mainland Southeast Asia. A study of the world's frontier forests by the World Resources Institute shows that Kachin contains one of the region's last remaining areas of large, intact natural forest ecosystems that are relatively undisturbed and large enough to maintain all their biodiversity. Tigers are considered critically endangered with an estimated 7,000 left anywhere in the wild. All species of tigers are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Still, tiger skins and bones, and other derivatives such as the penis, are being smuggled into the markets of southeast Asia, Schaller said, where they fetch high prices for use in the traditional medicine trade. The region is affected by insurgency, as the indigenous tribes such as the Kachin fight for a sovereign state. This unrest has repercussions in both India and Burma, according to the Wildlife Trust of India. "The region has excellent untouched forests especially in places called Medog in Tibet and Hukong in Burma. Both have noteworthy populations of tigers, and both are under heavy poaching pressure," Dr. Schaller said.
"The areas being extremely remote cannot be effectively patrolled apart from the fact that hunting is a way of life with the people living in the areas, he pointed out. He also pointed out that the DNA studies of the tiger done from samples picked up from south and south-east Asia profile a mix of sub-species that show no pure strains. "Don't ask me about the sub-species of tigers found in the areas I am talking about. I am getting very conflicting signals of a genetic mix and the picture is very unclear," he said. Dr. Schaller is science director of International Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society based at New York's Bronx Zoo. He has done pioneering work on the Indian subcontinent on the lives of large mammals such as the tiger, sambhar and mountain goat.
Dr. Schaller has worked with gorillas in Africa, with giant pandas in China, and on the Tibetan plateua with the snow leopard, the blue sheep, and the Tibetan antelope. He has written dozens of books and hundreds of articles. Believing that if the dominant animal in an ecosystem is protected, all the other plants and animals are thereby protected, he now concentrates on safeguarding habitat for critically endangered mammals. "I now work with species to secure habitats for them," Dr. Schaller said. "I worked for more than 10 years in China especially in Tibet to secure a sanctuary for the wildlife there especially the Tibetan antelope, and I could persuade the government to set aside 120,000 square miles in Chang Thang for them, which is the largest sanctuary in Asia." "I am now trying to work with the governments in Burma, Vietnam, Mongolia and Tajikistan among others to set up reserves. In fact Iran is very interested in setting up a reserve for the Asiatic cheetah and I am working towards that there," he said. "India is the best place for the long term survival of the tiger," Dr. Schaller said. "I hope the government has the political will to conserve it. Without it not much is possible." Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
Kachin State is still remote and heavily forested. (Photo courtesy 
The tiger is India's national animal (Photo courtesy 
Wildlife expert Dr. George Schaller (Photo courtesy 