LUCKNOW, India — Police broke up a major tiger poaching ring in northern India, arresting an alleged kingpin and 15 others, police and wildlife officials said Thursday.
In a rare success for India’s embattled conservationists, police in the city of Allahabad raided a meeting Tuesday of suspected poachers, traders and couriers who were negotiating over three tiger pelts and skeletons, senior police official Arvind Chaturvedi said.
Conservationists say the killing of tigers for their pelts and body parts to supply the Chinese traditional medicine market is a main factor in the sharp decline in wild tigers in recent years.
There are no more than 1,500 tigers in India’s reserves and jungles — down from about 3,600 just five years ago and an estimated 100,000 a century ago, according to the Indian government.
Police said they received a tip-off from conservation groups that Shabbir Hasan Qureshi, an alleged trader in banned animal parts, was taking part in the meeting. Chaturvedi said Qureshi was ready to pay $4,500 for each pelt and skeleton. That is a small fortune for impoverished villagers who trap the tigers, but almost nothing compared to the estimated $50,000 they would fetch on the Chinese black market.
Ramesh Ahluwalia, a senior forest official, said the tiger skins were fresh, indicating the tigers may have been killed as recently as one week ago.
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