Environmental Investigation Agency UK

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) investigates and campaigns against environmental crime and abuse. Its undercover investigations expose transnational wildlife crime, with a focus on elephants, pangolins and tigers, and forest crimes such as illegal logging and deforestation for cash crops. It works to safeguard global marine ecosystems by addressing the threats posed by plastic pollution, bycatch and commercial exploitation of whales, dolphins and porpoises. It also reduces the impact of climate change by working to eliminate powerful refrigerant greenhouse gases, exposing related illicit trade and improving energy efficiency in the cooling sector.

There are only about 4,000 wild tigers remaining across their Asian range, a dramatic decline of 96 per cent since the turn of the 20th century. The wild tiger’s stronghold is India, home to more than half of the world population.

There are more than 7,000 tigers in captivity in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, in facilities ranging from huge open-air complexes to tiny ‘backyard’ operations. These tigers serve no conservation purpose and the skins, bones, teeth and claws of many of these ‘farmed’ tigers end up in trade.

Investigators from the Environmental Investigation Agency were offered this tiger skin for sale by a taxidermist in China, taken from a farmed tiger. Most tiger skins are sold to wealthy individuals as prestigious home décor.

Wildlife criminals even profit from the dead tiger cubs born in commercial captivity, using them to make ‘tiger cub wine’ which is sold as a tonic. Investigators have witnessed at first-hand the carcasses of tiger cubs soaking in vats of alcohol along with ingredients such as snakes, scorpions and bear paws.