Zoos kill healthy tigers for the skin trade

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ZOOS are killing healthy tigers and other endangered species and selling their skins to be stuffed and mounted as trophies for private collectors, an investigation has found. The skins are sold by the zoos to taxidermists who prepare them for clients in defiance of attempts by the government to stifle the trade in tiger products. Last week undercover reporters from The Sunday Times were offered the skins from two zoo tigers, which were both only a few years old when they died, for £6,000. “There are too many of them and if they are not put down they will die of old age, get incinerated and thrown away,” Andre Brandwood, a Hertford-shire taxidermist, told them. He said zoos had recognised there was a market and were placing a “shelf life” on animals to cash in by having them stuffed before they got old, suffered illness and then cost them money. “What’s happening is that various zoos . . . [have] realised there’s a market, hence .

.. . there is a fixed price on tigers.”