REPORT TO STANDING COMMITTEE 2-6 October 2006

ALARMING TRADE IN OTTER FURS

 

In the past concern about trade in skins and body parts has been largely concentrated on large fauna such as tigers, leopards and rhino and there has been much public outcry and conservation effort to protect these species. However smaller species, such as the otter, have been overlooked and their exploitation has gone largely unnoticed. Nevertheless trade in otter skins is extensive and is usually a part of the whole illegal wildlife trade operation.

There are four species of otter in Asia: Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra), smooth-coated otter (Lutra perspicillata), Asian short-clawed otter (Amblonyx cinereus) and the rare hairy-nosed otter (Lutra sumatrana), although this last species is confined to south eastern Asia

Otters are a top predator in a wetland system and as they use both the land and aquatic habitats they are an ideal indicator species as to the health of these environments. In spite of this in many Asian countries in particular little has been done to protect them. Habitat fragmentation has had a significant impact on otter populations but over-hunting is now threatening their survival in many areas, especially India.

In February 2006, the International Otter Survival Fund was approached by the Akin Companies Group who expressed an interest in otter pelts and requested catalogues and price lists together with information on the size and quality of the furs. They also asked if the otters were farm-raised or not.

The Akin Companies Group claimed to be an international trading and consulting company with branches in Romania, Ukraine and Kosova although the company seems to be based in Turkey. Enquiries were made but their website seems to be permanently "under construction". However this led IOSF to investigate further the problem with trade in otter furs.

The following gives a summary of the KNOWN trade only since 2000, which has come to light during the investigations by IOSF. However this is only the tip of the iceberg as this is just an initial investigation and further work is needed to establish the true scale of the problem.

2000 - Khaga, India, 221 otter, 4 tiger and 70 leopard skins.

8 August 2001 – Xiaguan, China, 134 otter, 23 tiger and 33 leopard skins.

11 February 2003 – Siliguri, India, 19 otter and 20 leopard skins.

4 April 2003 – Kathmandu, Nepal, 14 otter and 109 leopard skins.

22 May 2003 – Samalkha, India, 18 otter and 7 leopard skins

8 October 2003 - Sangsang, Tibet, total of 1390 skins - 778 otters, 31 tiger, 581 leopard and 2 lynx skins.

20 April 2004 – Kathmandu, Nepal, 24 total of otter and leopard skins.

11 July 2004 – Kathmandu, Nepal, 11 otter and 3 tiger skins.

31 January 2005 – Delhi, India, 42 otter, 2 tiger, 38 leopard and 1 snow leopard skins.

8 March 2005 – Delhi, India, 4 otter and 3 leopard skins.

6 April 2005 – Delhi, India - three Tibetans found with 14 otter skins and 45 leopard which were being sent to Nepal.

Summer 2005 – 300 sea otter skins sold on black market in Moscow.

2 September 2005 - Langtang National Park, Nepal, 279 skins were seized, including 216 otter skins.

11 September 2005, Zhangmu, which is in sight of the Tibet-Nepal border, 92 skins were found - 20 otter, 12 tiger and 60 leopard skins.

10 January 2006 – Faitelpur, India, 1 otter and 14 leopard skins.

3 February 2006 – Delhi, India, 4 otter and 34 leopard skins.

Sea otter trade at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia - Winter 2005/2006 300 sea otter skins sold in the black market in Petro.

Sea otter fur prices in Fairbanks, Alaska, have risen from $50 to $125-150 because of increased trade in Asia.

Linxia in Gansu Province, China, is the biggest market place with a total of 1,833 otter skins openly on sale including Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) and smooth-coated otter (L. perspicillata).

2005 - According to a report by the Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI), a wildlife trader, Sansar Chand, supplied between 3275 and 3825 otter skins to eight different Nepalese and Tibetan buyers. This had risen from 1974 when Chand was arrested for 680 skins including 85 otter, 1 tiger and 3 leopard. Clearly they now have a highly organised network involved in this crime.

Wildlife Conservation Nepal report that at any given time traders have at least 10-15 otter skins with them.

50% trade comes from India but also from Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan

Otter numbers have drastically declined in India and also in the Danube basin following hunting for furs over winter 2005-2006.

 

11/02/03 Siliguri, India. 19

040/4/03 Kathmandu 14

08/10/06 Sangsang,Tibet, China 778

11/07/04 Thankot check point, Kathmandu 11

18/03/04 Daklang,Sindhupalchok, Nepal 6

040/9/05 Syafru Besi, Rasuwa, Nepal 238

17/04/05 Baudha, Kathmandu 38

(Source: Wildlife Conservation Nepal, 2005; EIA, UK and Department of Forests, Nepal)

Table 2: The Trade in Numbers in India 1994 – 31 August 2006-09-29

(Source "Skinning the Cat – Crime and Politics of the Big Cat Skin Trade", 2006, EIA)

 

In March 2006, an article in the Anchorage Daily news described the revived interest in otter pelts at auctions there. According to the article "Otter prices have exploded on the national market thanks to increased demand in Asia. Otter pelts on the auction weekend were steadily pulling in about $125-150, up from about $50 just a few years ago."

Sea otter pelts are also being sold in Russia, with at least 300 skins being sold on the black market in Moscow in summer 2005. Most of these were obtained illegally from the Commander Islands Biosphere Nature Reserve. Since then we have been informed that a further 300 sea otter skins were being sold openly on the black market at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, with 200 of them from the Commander Islands. Most of these skins will be sold on to the markets in China.

In September 2005 an article entitled "Otters: Dressed to Kill" appeared in the Times of India News Network. This began "They were everywhere. In upscale shops in old Lhasa, on the streets of Linxia in China’s Gansu province and on the bodies of young men and women attending horse festivals in Tibet. But there’s one image – a young man wearing a traditional Tibetan dress embellished with six otter heads …"

The problem seems to be particularly bad in Tibet where otter furs form part of the national dress, the chupa, and many of the illegal furs are destined for this market. Otter skins are mostly used to trim the chupa and only those in a high position, such as chieftains, wore the whole skin as an indication of their wealth or social standing. These costumes are worn at many of the festivals but these are no longer purely traditional fairs but have become tourist attractions. In addition official state functions also have traditional cultural events and the wearing of highly decorated fur costumes is seen as a means of demonstrating the wealth and status of Tibetan culture.

The Dalai Lama is against the use of animal furs and made a public appeal in January 2006 to stop using wildlife products. Since then there have been incidents of the burning of stockpiles of wildlife skins in some monasteries. However, they are a symbol of status and cultural identity and the Chinese have also banned such events as they see it as a public demonstration of allegiance to the Dalai Lama.

Traders say most of the skins are coming from India which is totally illegal. In fact it was way back in 1993 that the last legal skins of L. perspicillata were imported to China and these were then re-exported, so clearly there is a major illegal trade.

In northern parts of India the otter is known as "Udbilao" or "Pani ka Kutta". Unlike the tiger and leopard it is regarded as "nobody’s child" and no-one seems to be concerned for its conservation. Indeed there are also reports of body parts of otters being used in "traditional" medicine – workers at the Divya Yoga Pharmacy said "they had prepared powders from crushed human skulls and animal parts, including the testicles of "udbilao" (Indian otter). While the crushed skull powder was used to produce medicines to treat epilepsy, the latter was used to treat sexual weakness." (Frontline Vol 23, Issue 02, 28 January – 10 February 2006)

The otter in India is endangered and highly protected, but this protection appears to be on paper only as there is no programme for REAL protection. There is a highly organised network of traders and poachers and otter skins are usually found in any haul of tiger and leopard skins. The pelts may be smuggled out in fake gasoline tanks using the ancient trade routes for salt, spices and wool. Some traders in Lhasa even boast that they have good contacts with customs officials along the China/Nepal border who allow them to carry out their trade.

Linxia in Gansu Province, China, is the biggest market place and a total of 1,833 otter skins were found openly on sale, all for use on the chupa. Information from EIA and WPSI indicates that traders from Lhasa bring otter, tiger and leopard skins to Linxia to sell to the Hui Muslim-Chinese community, who are highly skilled tanners.

They then sell them on to the Tibetans in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai Provinces for whom Linxia is more accessible than Lhasa. However, in the Bharkor area of old Lhasa alone, 305 otter skin chupas were on sale.

 

It is estimated that at least 50% of these skins are from India, but skins from Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan are also highly valued. Otters have vanished from Kashmir’s Wular Lake area and Uttaranchal and due to poaching otters in India have been reduced to a few hundred in isolated pockets and they are rarely seen outside protected areas. Some of the otters are caught using leg-hold traps, whilst some poachers use specially trained dogs

The fur problem is not confined to Tibet or even neighbouring countries and since the southern borders were opened in the 1980s the skins of various endangered species have become easily obtained.

Furthermore, it is not only Asian species of otter which are involved, but skins from different species of otter are on the market, some apparently obtained through legitimate means e.g. American (Lontra canadensis) river otter skins. Sea otter (Enhydra lutris) skins are also being sought resulting in the increased market in Alaska and there are also illegal imports of the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra).

In April 2006 IOSF received information from Austria, which said that during the severe winter in the Danube Delta the channels and lakes were frozen, which made it very easy to kill otters using dogs. In one village a man collected 120 otter furs which were then exported to Turkey and then probably on to Tibet. The Danube Delta was surveyed very carefully this March and hardly any otter signs were found at all – this is an area which has been studied over a number of years so there is a lot of background information on otter numbers. A similar situation was found in the Ukraine part of the Danube Delta last October.

It is clear that trade in otter skins is widespread and having a drastic effect on populations of different species of otter worldwide and not just in Asia. This is in spite of the fact that Nepal and China are signatories of CITES.

In 2006 EIA again visited the area and found 11 people wearing otter skin chupa and in Lhasa there were at least 38 otter skin chupas available. This represented a decline but as traders in Linxia in Gansu Province were particularly aggressive on this visit they were not able to carry out a complete survey.

In many countries wildlife crime is not seen as a matter of high priority and therefore there is only minimal effort in terms of money and enforcement effort. Some people even believe that it is just a local issue and is almost inevitable where there is poverty.

However the UN has recognised that it is a serious issue of transnational organised crime which even has a negative impact on the economy and social structure of the countries involved.

The trade in otter skins is a large part of this whole illegal trade which includes other endangered species such as the tiger and leopard, but the scale of the trade in otters has been largely overlooked. Therefore efforts must be made to stop this illegal trade in skins completely.

Further action is essential and IOSF would urge CITES to treat this issue as a matter of urgency and to enforce the ban on trade in skin and other body parts. Without such action not only will the tiger and leopard disappear but also species of otter in particular the smooth-coated.

The Conservation Status as identified by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species of the species mentioned above is as follows:

Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) – NEAR THREATENED

Smooth-coated otter (Lutra perspicillata) – VULNERABLE

Asian short-clawed otter (Aonyx cinereus) - NEAR THREATENED

Hairy-nosed otter (Lutra sumatrana) – DATA DEFICIENT

Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris) - ENDANGERED

IOSF is grateful to Dr Vladimir Sevostianov. President Commander Island Association, and the Wildlife Conservation Nepal for background information and data and to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) for additional data and assistance with this report. Many of the statistics are included in the recent EIA report, Skinning the Cat – Crime and Politics of the Big Cat Skin Trade (2006). Thanks also to EIA and Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) for their kind permission to reproduce the photographs.

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