Dangerous liasion
Poaching of endangered animals has a lot in common with drug trafficking. It has added fillip to the international medicine trade based on animal parts -an organised crime stretching from North America to Asia. Policing the activity is difficult, although there have been seizures by IUCN/WWF supported TRAFFIC-international, and India's Wildlife Protection Society.
For decades, gall bladders of wild bears have been attributed with an aphrodisiac effect. Tiger bone is traditionally valued for cur- ing typhoid and malaria. Hence the flourishing trade.
Ir.dia's tiger population, num- bering 4,334 in a 1989 census, increased from only a few hundred in the early '705, but is now steadily decreasing. Another rare species endangered due to poaching is the Amur tiger, whose population in 1985 numbered around 240 mem- bers in the Russian far east, with some 20 known to exist in China in 1993, near the Russian border. The fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union worsened the situation.
Despite ex-President of the US George Bush's "war on drugs", the menace, feeding on illegal animal trade, continued to proliferate. Today, inner-city unemployment and social crimes have driven the problem to a point of no return.