New Delhi, April 29: The head of India's new task force, fighting to save the nation's dwindling stock of tigers, said on Friday the big cats were on the verge of extinction, because of rampant poaching for their body parts.
Indian media and wildlife activists have reported an alarming fall in the number of tigers in sanctuaries across the country, prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to order a police investigation and set up the task force to stem the decline.
"There has been a decline in the tiger population everywhere -- India, Laos, Myanmar. Tigers are almost on the verge of extinction," said environmental activist Sunita Narain, who leads the task force to review management of tiger reserves.
A century ago, there were an estimated 40,000 tigers in India. Now, government figures say about 3,700 survive while some experts say the number may be barely 2,000.
"The issue of tigers has been one of great concern ... The menace of poaching has been very virulent across most of Asia," she said, adding that authorities needed to take urgent steps to check killing of the animals.
"We're not waiting for the last tiger to disappear."
Trade in dead tigers is illegal, but a single one can fetch up to $50,000 on the international market. Organs and body parts are popular in Chinese medicine. Bones are worth about $400 a kilogram, a penis almost $850, a tooth $120 and a claw just $10.
"Little is known about the organised nature of this crime or its conduit routes," Narain said.
"Tigers skins are also very highly priced. But the trail is cold. Nobody knows how it operates and where it goes."
But a government census conducted this month found that the number of Asiatic lions in the Gir forests in western India, the endangered animal's only natural habitat, had increased to 359 from 327 four years ago after a crackdown on poaching.
Narain said the tiger task force would look at ways of improving the methodology of tiger counting and measures to strengthen tiger conservation in the country before it submitted its report in three months.
The task force was set up following reports in March that tigers may have been wiped out entirely in the Sariska sanctuary -- where the Project Tiger conservation programme began in 1973 and where there were an estimated 16-18 big cats a year ago.
Activists said they feared the story was the same in sanctuaries across India, which has almost half the world's surviving tigers.
