Maintaining that it would not "tolerate" illegal trade of wildlife products, the Government today destroyed a large number of seized illegal wildlife articles, including tiger pelts and ivory.
The illegal wildlife products -- including those derived from tigers, elephants, leopards, lions, snakes, deer, owls, mongoose, and shells -- were pulverised and burned by the Ministry of Environment and Forests officials at the Delhi Zoo here.
Union Environment and Forests Minister Prakash Javadekar, who was present there, admitted that money generated from this illegal trade was being used for terrorism and crimes such as drug trafficking and said the government was committed towards protection of flora and fauna.
"We have decided to destroy this in public view because we want to send a strong signal that illegal trade of the wildlife animal products were banned and would not be tolerated," the minister said.
Javadekar said illegal trafficking of animals and illegal trade of wildlife animal products like the horns, the skin or the teeth, everything gets a very good price.
"So, today we have decided to burn and put all the illegal products to incineration," Javadekar said.
The wildlife products resulting from unlawful activities were seized by the Delhi Wildlife department for combating wildlife crime. Few wildlife articles available in National Zoological Park were also destroyed today.
Citing an example of the amount of money use generated from illegal trade of wildlife products, Javadekar said, "Can you imagine a Rhino's single horn can fetch Rs 10 million and this money can be used for other crimes such as terrorism or drug trafficking."
The Minister said that hunting was a sports activity 200 years ago but that created a situation where many animal species became endangered and were on the point of extinction.
"From that point, we have brought them back to life and in good number. But now there is the threat of poaching. So, through this gesture we want to show that the Government of India cares for co-existence of flora, fauna, and human beings because it is an inseparable link in our scheme of things of nature," he said.
According to WWF, a leading organisation in wildlife conservation and endangered species, each year hundreds of millions of plants and animals are caught or harvested from the wild and then sold as food, pets, ornamental plants, leather, tourist curios, and medicine.
While a great deal of this trade is legal and is not harming wild populations, a worryingly large proportion is illegal and threatens the survival of many endangered species, says the WWF.
