Bangladesh remains a hub for poaching endangered tigers, according to a study released on Friday, despite government claims that a crackdown on poaching groups involved in the trade has been successful.

Straddling India and Bangladesh, the Sundarbans (southwest), the largest mangrove in the world listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is home to one of the largest populations of Bengal tigers in the world.

Their skin, bones and flesh are bought by smugglers as part of a vast illegal wildlife trade worth an estimated $20 billion (€18 billion) per year worldwide.

Research by Panthera, a big cat conservation group, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that poached tiger parts in the Sundarbans have been exported to 15 countries, with India and China being the most common destinations. common.

“Bangladesh plays a much bigger role in the illegal tiger trade than we thought,” study co-author Rob Pickles said in a statement.

Smugglers operating in the Sundarbans found a lucrative trade in tiger poaching before the government cracked down from 2016.

According to official figures, at least 117 poachers were killed, hundreds were arrested and many more surrendered, encouraged by a government amnesty campaign.

But Panthera’s research, published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, indicated that the vacuum created by the crackdown had been filled by more than 30 organizations specializing in tiger poaching and opportunistic poachers.

Traffickers operate through their own logistics companies and, in some cases, conceal their activities in the form of legal wildlife trade licenses, the study adds.

Results disputed by Abu Naser Mohsin Hossain, official curator of the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, who claimed that the crackdowns had helped stop the illicit trade.

“No tiger has died as a result of human-tiger conflict in the past five years. Tiger sightings have increased,” he told AFP.

Only 114 Bengal tigers live in Bangladesh’s part of the Sundarbans, according to an official census released in 2019 – a slight increase from a record low four years earlier.

29/07/2023 02:46:32 –        Dacca (AFP)           © 2023 AFP