Shahtoosh smugglers arrested in Thailand.

27/03/2007 00:00:00 Thai authorities have broken a smuggling ring dealing in the illegal trade of shahtoosh wool, which can only obtained by killing the highly endangered Tibetan Antelope. In a raid on three shops in Bangkok, police seized over 250 suspected shahtoosh shawls, one of which needs wool from up to five dead antelopes. 250 shawls would have a value of several million dollars and represent the killing up around 1000 Tibetan antelopes.

Unlike other wool that is harvested by shearing or combing, shahtoosh, (‘the king of wools’) is obtained by killing Tibetan Antelopes (more commonly known as the Chiru), which are found almost exclusively in the remote Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Poaching has already drastically decimated the Tibetan Antelope population as shahtoosh shawls command high prices on the black market. In 1900, there were around 1 million antelopes in the wild, but now there are as few as 50,000.

The raid comes after four months of undercover work by members of the Association of South East Asian Nations Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) which includes a division of the Royal Thai police and the Thai Department of Natural Resources with contributions by TRAFFIC, the trade monitoring network for the World Conservation Union and Word Wildlife Fund and by WildAid.
‘The trade route for shahtoosh originates on the Tibetan Plateau, where poachers kill the endangered antelope. The wool is then smuggled into the mountains of Kashmir, where shahtoosh weaving is long established. The shawls are sold in India -or in the luxury goods markets in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Some of the shops that were raided are located in luxury hotels for wealthy tourists. The dealers said their biggest buyers were tourists from the United States, Europe and Japan.

Despite conservation campaigns, strict laws and high-profile criminal cases, demand by wealthy tourists for the shawls continues to drive poaching. In 2005 Swiss officials confiscated 537 shahtoosh shawls, and an anti-poaching raid in Tibet found 100 Tibetan Antelope pelts.