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By Justin Huggler
The Independent UK
Wednesday 15 February 2006
The Tibetans are setting fire to tiger skins and other exotic furs after the Dalai Lama personally called on his people to stop the trade in endangered animal pelts. Tibet has become the world's leading market for the contraband, as Justin Huggler reports.
A rich and unusual smoke has been drifting into the Tibetan skies. People have been emerging from their homes and burning furs and animal skins. Onlookers have gathered to watch as Tibetans burned tiger skins worth as much as £6,000 in the streets. Many have given up their chubas, traditional robes adorned with tiger skins that can cost the equivalent of two years' wages for the average Tibetan, and watched happily as they went up in smoke.
In one town, it is said you can see the smoking ruins of tiger skins and other furs along the roadside. These scenes are not part of some exotic ritual. They are part of a major new environmental drive among Tibetans that could prove decisive in whether the tiger survives in the wild, or is driven to extinction.
They come after the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader in exile, personally intervened and called on his people to stop the trade in wild animal skins. Because, almost unnoticed by the outside world, Tibet has become the world's leading market for contraband tiger skins.
Environmentalists now believe the Tibetan skin trade is as influential as Chinese medicine in driving the demand for tigers. It is the market for tiger skins in Tibet that has ravaged the wild tiger population in India in recent years. Environmentalists are warning that the tiger is on the verge of extinction after it emerged last year that large numbers have disappeared from India's wildlife reserves - under the noses of game wardens.
News emerged yesterday that tigers are missing from yet another Indian reserve, this time Buxa, in West Bengal. Some Indian wildlife experts are warning there may be as few as 1,200 tigers left in India.
Shops in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, openly display tiger skins for sale, despite the international ban on the tiger trade, and the fact it is illegal under Chinese law. Environmentalists have proved a direct link between the disappearing tigers of India and the skins on display in Tibet.
Which is where the Dalai Lama has stepped in. Last month, thousands of Tibetans streamed into India. Around 7,000 were allowed to come by the Chinese authorities. But thousands more came without permission, braving an arduous trek across the Himalayas in the harshest winter conditions, struggling through Nepal, which is in the grip of civil war, and then travelling for hundreds of miles to south India.
They were coming for the Kalachakra, one of the most important festivals of the Tibetan Buddhist calendar. Because this year's was the 30th Kalachakra the present Dalai Lama has presided at, and because it was being held at the site of the original Kalachakra centuries ago, exceptionally large numbers of Tibetans made the journey.
The Dalai Lama seized the opportunity to deliver a stark message to the vast crowds from inside Tibet. Wearing animal skins and furs was, he said, against Buddhism. He said he had been "ashamed" at photos which emerged from Tibet recently showing Tibetans wearing robes covered with tiger skins.
"When you go back to your respective places, remember what I had said earlier and never use, sell, or buy wild animals, their products or derivatives," he told the crowds. Observers who were at the festival said they had rarely seen the Dalai Lama so passionate. His words clearly hit home: many Tibetans who were there said they would burn their fur-trimmed robes as soon as they returned home.
On 31 January, two weeks after the end of the festival, the first report emerged from Tibet of someone burning furs. The movement quickly snowballed, and there have been incidents of fur burning across Tibet. It is not only tiger skins. Traditional Tibetan chubas (gowns) are also lined with leopard, otter and fox fur, and there have been instances of all of them being burnt.
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