Bolivian jaguars endangered by Chinese demand for their fangs and other body parts
Traffickers also sell the skin, and even the testicles, which along with the ground-down teeth, are prized by some Chinese as an aphrodisiac
Bolivia’s once-thriving jaguar population is loping into the cross hairs of a growing threat from poachers responding to growing Chinese demand for the animal’s teeth and skull.
Researchers believe there are around 7,000 of the speckled big cats in Bolivia, out of a global population of some 64,000, stretching from North America to Argentina.
But such is the appetite in China’s huge underground market that “if controls are not put in place, it can lead to a serious problem” for their survival, warned Fabiola Suarez of the Environment Ministry.
Considered vulnerable by conservationists, the jaguar’s future in the South American country is in the hands of anti-trafficking police only now coming to grips with the potential scale of the problem.
Local authorities began getting reports in 2014 of trade in the animal in the northeastern area of Beni, according to Rodrigo Herrera, an adviser to Bolivia’s directorate of Biodiversity at the Environment Ministry.