Thanks to a program of wildlife law enforcement funded by the Wildlife Trust of India a gang of six notorious tiger poachers were caught with lethal jaw traps in the Bandupur Tiger Reserve in southern India
[map]. The five men and one woman were sentenced to three years each by Karnataka High Court. The gang was caught after two members turned informers. They moved across India often acting as street vendors until the set up camp next to a reserve and enter in small groups to track tigers. They are renowned for their tracking skills and would stay at the illegal work until they killed their prize, usually with a spear thrust into the mouth of the wounded animal; the tiger's skin is quickly stripped and the carcass buried in the forest. The poachers return in a few weeks to collect the valuable bones. The story is remarkable because so few tiger poachers are convicted in India. The law enforcement team of the Wildlife Trust are working with forest protection staff to ensure more arrests lead to court convictions in the future. Survival of wild tigers in India depends directly on strict enforcement of existing anti-poaching laws as well as expanding tiger habitat. Although the sentence handed down was inadequate given the extreme plight of wild tigers in India and the cruel methods employed to kill their prey, conservationists hope these rare convictions will persuade other poachers to give up their illegal trade.
More good news in the fight against illegal trade in wildlife is the announcement that the United States will crush its six ton inventory of ivory. The ivory, stored at a federal repository near Denver, CO is both raw and worked and comes from seizures over the past twenty-five years. The announcement was made by Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell at the White House yesterday. The public relations event is part of the effort by the administration to take stronger measures against international wildlife crime that is increasingly being seen a means for terrorists to support their operations. Elephant massacres have taken place in Gabon, Chad, Cameroon and the Central African Republic in the past year by well-armed, organized criminal gangs. Gabon's Minkebe National Park lost an estimated 11,000 forest elephants in the past decade. The United States remains a major destination for illegal ivory. Officials hope the ivory destruction will remind people that ivory objects are not art or collectable, but the remains of destroyed intelligent being. The US Fish & Wildlife Service provided just $8.6 million in support this year for international conservation projects, hardly enough to buy one modern jet fighter.
