Gunned down for fashion: The animal whose fur is worth more than gold

[Guest guest]

Gunned down for fashion: The animal whose fur is worth

more than gold

by DANNY PENMAN

Daily Mail

5th October 2007

 

When the men first sighted the beautiful baby antelope

in the moonlight, it was past three o'clock in the

morning.

 

The creatures were only a few hours old and still

wobbling about on their spindly little legs. Mothers

and grandmothers nuzzled them protectively. A single

male stood guard, sniffing the air tentatively for any

signs of danger.

 

It was a beautiful, heart-warming sight that could

easily have been taken from a David Attenborough

documentary - but for what happened next.

 

A group of six men in a four-wheel-drive truck slowly

approached the herd. A rough-looking man lifted an

ageing automatic rifle to his eye, took aim and fired.

A pregnant antelope dropped to her knees and began

twitching violently.

 

The rest of the men in the truck threw back a green

tarpaulin and switched on an enormous headlight to

bathe the herd with a burning white light. The

antelope froze with fright, making them easy targets.

 

In a matter of seconds, the entire herd was gunned

down with assault rifles and machine guns. Dozens of

antelope lay dead - slaughtered for one of

high-fashion's most desirable 'items', the shahtoosh

shawl, made from the wool of the chiru antelope.

 

Coveted by the super-rich and fashionistas alike,

shahtoosh has a mystique like no other. Shahtoosh,

which means 'king of wool' in Persian, is so fine,

light and translucent that a shawl made from it will

pass through a wedding ring.

 

It makes cashmere feel like horse-hair and the

delicate astrakhan (made from foetal lambs) like an

old woollen jumper. Napoleon gave a shahtoosh shawl to

Josephine. Indian maharajas gave them to their

concubines and Chinese emperors sent armies to plunder

them.

 

Shahtoosh went out of fashion almost a decade ago,

shortly after it became illegal and police around the

world began to crack down on traders. But in certain

circles in the UK, shahtoosh is once again becoming a

must-have commodity, with no one knowing or caring

where it comes from.

 

Consumers are fuelling a trade that is driving to

extinction one of the most beautiful and exotic

creatures in the world. It is also driving a parallel

and equally illegal boom in poached tiger bones, drugs

and arms.

 

" It's a disgusting trade, " says Trevor Pickett, of

Picketts, one of London's most exclusive leather and

scarf boutiques.

 

" We get dealers coming in from time to time, but we

always send them on their way. Even if it wasn't

illegal, we still would not touch it. "

 

Andy Fisher, head of the Metropolitan Police's

Wildlife Crime Unit, says: " If there is a market for

something, then someone will supply it.

 

" Twenty years ago shahtoosh was traded on a small

scale by local communities. But once the fashion

industry adopted it, the trade exploded and so did the

poaching.

 

" It is important that people realise what they are

supporting when they buy shahtoosh. They are fuelling

the poaching of endangered species and supporting

organised crime. "

 

High in the mountains of Ladakh, on the border between

Tibet and India, lie the most lucrative hunting

grounds for the poachers. They slaughter the chiru

with automatic weapons mounted on off-road vehicles.

 

Those creatures that escape the bullets are caught in

vicious leghold traps. The animals may remain there in

agony for days before a hunter arrives to dispatch

them. Poachers who lack guns often pursue the animals

by motorbike until they die of exhaustion.

 

Once the antelope are killed, their fleeces are torn

from their bodies and a few ounces of wool plucked

from their soft fleecy stomachs. Occasionally their

horns are used in medicines. The rest of the body has

no value except for the occasional meal for a poacher.

 

 

Attempts have been made to farm chiru, but shearing

the antelope proved impossible as the shahtoosh has to

be plucked directly out of the animals' skin to be

usable. It is also far, far easier to gun the animals

down than to tend them. This has led to a free-for-all

slaughter on an astonishing scale.

 

Before shahtoosh became fashionable in the early

1990s, more than a million animals roamed the Tibetan

plateau. Of these vast herds only about 75,000

antelope now remain, with an estimated 20,000 killed

each year by poachers.

 

Shahtoosh is so light and valuable that it has become

almost a parallel currency in the Himalayas and is

used to pay for guns, drugs and other illegal wildlife

products.

 

Thousands of pounds' worth can easily be hidden inside

the lining of a jacket and smuggled over borders with

only the slightest chance of being caught, and as such

it has become a common 'currency' among crime gangs

and terrorist groups, such as Kashmiri separatists.

 

In particular, wildlife experts say that it is a key

part of a complicated transaction that involves tiger

bones being smuggled into China, via Tibet, where they

can fetch huge prices as a black market medicine.

 

In return, the smugglers are paid in shahtoosh to take

back to India, where the market for the fine wool is

booming.

 

When the raw wool is smuggled into India from Tibet it

has a street value of around £500 a pound. Trafficking

tiger bones one way and shahtoosh the other earns the

smugglers profit margins of 600per cent or more.

 

As a result of this two-way trade, one tiger is killed

in India every day. There are now only about 3,000

left in the whole of the sub-continent.

 

" Every shahtoosh shawl has the blood of a tiger on

it, " says Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection

Society of India.

 

" Two species are being slaughtered for this shameless

trade - the chiru and the tiger. Chirus are being

killed in their thousands and the tiger pushed to the

brink of extinction for the sake of fashion and the

greed of a few ruthless wildlife criminals. "

 

The wool is eventually smuggled into the Indian state

of Jammu and Kashmir, where it is woven into fabric.

 

It is a highly-skilled process, as the fur fibres are

only half an inch long and extremely difficult to

handle.

 

The shawls are then adorned with the season's most

fashionable new patterns ready for sale.

 

In a programme to be broadcast soon on the Animal

Planet channel, undercover detective Steve Galster

managed to track down a dealer to Dharamshala in

northern India. He was selling the scarves for £500, a

small fortune in India.

 

These scarves would have been trafficked into Britain,

America and Europe, where they would have fetched up

to £15,000. Weight for weight, that makes the shawls

more valuable than cocaine or gold.

 

Even if smugglers are caught in the UK, the penalties

for trading are pitifully low. One dealer was fined

£1,500 for selling 138 shawls worth £350,000. That

works out at less than £11 per shawl.

 

Small wonder, then, that shahtoosh has become a

significant part of the booming £6billion illegal

wildlife trade. The trade as a whole is now the

thirdlargest illegal activity after drug smuggling and

gun running.

 

In the UK, shahtoosh shawls are available if you have

the money and the 'right' connections.

 

A TV reporter was recently offered shawls for £3,000

apiece in London. They are also available on the

internet.

 

From time to time 'shahtoosh parties' are held where

fashionistas meet to show off their shawls and buy the

latest designs. Most will know full well where the

wool for their scarves comes from, but they peddle a

variety of lies so they appear less heartless.

 

They claim that the wool is gathered-from bushes that

the antelope use as scratching posts, or is plucked

from the down of the mythical 'toosh' bird. They will

never admit that they know three young antelope must

die so they can wear a single shawl.

 

The Metropolitan Police is aware of the parties, but

has yet to make any arrests despite their best

efforts. They are, after all, exclusive

invitation-only events.

 

" Some people just want something that they think is

'better' than the next person and they have an awful

lot of money to spend on such things, " says Andy

Fisher of the Metropolitan Police.

 

" It does make you wonder what they're thinking of.

There are enough exclusive, expensive items out there

for them to buy. They do not have to drive a species

to extinction. "

 

The Indian and Chinese authorities have belatedly

started taking the trade seriously and begun to clamp

down on it - mostly, it has to be said, because of the

trade's links with organised crime.

 

In August, the Indian police intercepted 57 shawls

worth around £150,000 in Delhi. If convicted, the

traffickers face up to seven years in jail.

 

The Chinese, too, have been stepping up their efforts

to stop the slaughter with systematic antipoaching

patrols. Given that the chiru antelope is the mascot

for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it would be very

embarrassing for them if they failed to protect one of

their country's national symbols.

 

The simple truth is that shahtoosh is so valuable that

it is an almost irresistible source of money for

poverty-stricken Tibetans. But the real driving force

behind the trade is rich consumers in the developed

world.

 

" You just have to look at who's buying the shawls, "

says Robbie Marsland, UK director of the International

Fund for Animal Welfare.

 

" Only the very rich can afford to buy these shawls.

The demand from extravagant consumers has created a

cruel and bloody trade, effectively signing a death

sentence for these rare and beautiful animals. "

 

• Crime Scene Wild with Steve Galster is broadcast on

Mondays at 10pm on the Animal Planet channel.

 

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