More tigers have been poached in India this year than in all of 2015
The tiger population may be on the rise, but so is poaching, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
A census report released Friday shows that the number of tigers poached in the country already exceeds the total tally for 2015. As of April 26, at least 28 tigers had been poached or seized, up three from last year's final count.
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The report is especially troubling to environmental groups, many of which have increased efforts to curb the illegal practice in recent years. Since 2011, a local program called Guardians of the Wild launched an initiative to train more than 7,000 wildlife guards — a third of India's anti-poaching force at the time — to investigate poaching activity in Bhutan and Nepal.
"The stats are worrying indeed," said Tito Joseph, program manager at the group, in a statement to the AFB.
Tiger bones and meat are sold on the black market for use in traditional Chinese medicine, while the wild cat's pelts are bought and sold as luxury goods. The society reports that poachers commonly use poison, electrocution, steel traps and guns to kill their prey.
The census comes about a year after a report suggested that the tiger population may be rising. In 2015, conservation groups counted 3,890 wild tigers, up from an all-time low in 2010 of 3,200. To put that in perspective, there were at least 100,000 wild tigers in 1900, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
At last count, India remains the country with the largest wild tiger population, with more than 2,200 roaming around from the southern tip of Kerala state to the eastern swamps in West Bengal. Crimes for poaching in the country can include three years prison time and fines exceeding hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Poaching can only be stopped when we have coordinated, intelligence-led enforcement operations, because citizens of many countries are involved in illegal wildlife trade," Joseph said to the AFB. "It's a transnational organized crime."
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