(CN) Profits keep shahtoosh trade alive and antelope dying out

[Guest guest]

Tuesday, July 10, 2001 South China Morning Post

http://china.scmp.com/ZZZTK7AXTOC.html

REUTERS

 

Poachers still shoot 20,000 Tibetan antelopes each year,

threatening the animals with extinction despite a worldwide ban on trade in

their wool, wildlife protection groups said.

 

The antelope, called chiru, was still hunted in China and its

fur openly sold in India and Britain, the International Fund for Animal

Welfare said. Chiru numbers have dwindled from several million a century ago

to 75,000 and it could become extinct within five years.

 

The fund said super-fine shahtoosh wool was smuggled through

Nepal to India, where an industry of 40,000 people in the northern states of

Jammu and Kashmir weave it into shawls.

 

" Anti-poaching and anti-smuggling work can only stop a fraction

of the illegal slaughter and trade, " said Grace Gabriel, the fund's China

director. " Enticed by the market and the profit, many would still take their

chances. "

 

Worldwide bans, fashion-industry busts and the murders of

gamekeepers in China have in recent years helped bring attention to the

plight of the antelope, which inhabits the western Chinese plateaus of

Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang.

 

Shawls of shahtoosh - Persian for " king of wools " - fetch as

much as US$17,000 (HK$132,600) on trendy fashion strips in cities such as

Hong Kong, London and New York, where retailers and consumers are sometimes

misled on the wool's origins.

 

The fund and the Wildlife Trust of India released a detailed

report compiled from eight months of investigation into the trade in China,

Nepal and India.

 

Ms Gabriel said the total amount of wool processed in 1997 - the

latest year for which figures were available - rose to three tonnes from

only 20 to 30kg 50 years earlier. Though the fund believed bans and

enforcement had marginally slowed the shahtoosh trade, it had no figures and

the trade still thrived underground, she said.

 

To save the Tibetan antelope, the report calls for an end to

shahtoosh weaving in Jammu and Kashmir, international co-ordination to make

anti-poaching controls more effective and greater Western awareness to

suppress demand.

 

Ms Gabriel said the fund had lobbied governments for higher

penalties and stronger enforcement measures.

 

In May, a Los Angeles fashion boutique that imported and sold

the shawls agreed to pay a US$175,000 fine for violations of the US

Endangered Species Act.

 

In China, where funding to fight poachers has increased, a force

of 180 police had made 39 arrests since the start of last year, said Cao

Zhen, deputy director-general of the Forest Security Bureau.

 

In 1994 and 1998, leading Tibetan protectionists were killed in

battles with poachers and were lionised in national media.

 

The fund hopes that a sharp drop in the price of the wool over

the past five years will discourage poachers.

 

One kilogram of shahtoosh wool that sold for US$1,700 in India

in 1996 today sold for US$200 to US$350, Ms Gabriel said.

 

The fund has also lobbied the Government of Jammu and Kashmir to

follow a court ruling in May last year that required them to enforce the

Indian law banning the shahtoosh trade.