IN BANGKOK

ON MAY 29, Malaysian police found five wild tiger skins in the boot of a car driven by two Thais.

The tigers had probably been killed in Perak and Kelantan, said the unit commander Mohd Noor Idris, who estimated that the dried skins, each measuring about two metres in length, were valued at around RM18,000 each (around US$5,000).

The figure excludes the bones and dried organs, which were not found in the car but would certainly have found their way into the illegal market.

SOURCE: REUTERS

A dead tiger, with skin and bones and organs intact, can fetch well over US$25,000. A Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) report last February on Nepal's illegal wildlife trade, said. 'In Taiwan, a bowl of tiger penis soup goes for US$320 and a pair of eyes for US$170. Powdered tiger humerus bone brings up to US$3,200 per kg in Seoul.'

Tiger penis supposedly boosts virility, eyes supposedly help against epilepsy and malaria, and humerus bone supposedly helps against ulcers, rheumatism and typhoid.

Of course scientific tests have long shown that tiger parts have no more medicinal value than those of pigs and dogs. The fascination for tiger parts is purely psychological.

The money would be spread through the middlemen of the supply chain, with the poacher probably getting the least. It is possible and common today, to kill a tiger in the wild for less than US$25, so there is plenty of profit to spread around. The illegal wildlife trade is run by transnational criminal syndicates, and is one of the largest criminal trades in the world.

But is a tiger worth more dead or alive? On the face of it the question is a silly one. But the existence of the illegal wildlife trade in itself shows there are many people out there to whom it is a legitimate question, and therefore must be addressed. Valuing wild ecosystems has always been a somewhat unfair challenge thrown at conservationists and scientists by the kind of people who would like to turn forests into furniture and malls.

An initiative called Travel Operators for Tigers (Toft) recently gave two symbolic 'Lifetime Achievement' awards to two wild tigers in India.

The big cats were a tigress called Machali in Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan, and a tiger called B2 in Bandhavgarh National Park in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

Toft calculated that Machali has generated nearly US$100 million in around 10 years.

Machali has not only been stared at by thousands of tourists who hire vehicles to get to Ranthambhore, stay and eat at hotels in the area and hire guides and buy local souvenirs; she has also been photographed and filmed – and so have her 11 cubs down the years.

As for B2, he has sired over 35 tigers, 90 per cent of which lived to adulthood. Toft calculated that B2 had earned US$30m over 7 years.

It is not advisable to extrapolate figures like these to apply to all wild tigers in places as diverse as the dense jungles of Malaysia and the far drier and sparser forests of Ranthambhore.

But a median habitat – the mosaic forests of Corbett National Park in northern India where it is not easy to see a tiger – offers the possibility of some analysis.

It is a safe assumption that Corbett National Park is home to around 90-110 tigers. Of course numbers do not really matter as long as there is a healthy breeding population and poaching is absent or minimal – but it is necessary to have some basis even for a back of the envelope calculation.

Corbett drew 45,019 Indian and 4,293 foreign tourists in 1996-97. Eleven years later in 2007-08 the national park drew double the number of foreigners (8,794) and four times the number of Indians (162,600).

Revenue jumped from US$138,023 in 1996-97 to US$582,613 in 2007-08. This is the bare minimum earned, and only by the state government. The real figure would be several times that if one takes into account the money spent in the private sector in the area – on lodges, vehicles, guides, food and drink and so forth. The tourism industry generates employment for locals, and a local supply chain keeps the industry going.

Even the roughest and most minimalist estimates, would put the value of a wild tiger in Corbett National Park, at around US$6,000 per year based on tourism value alone.

The total economic value (TEV) of the Corbett ecosystem is another matter altogether. For the sake of comparison, the TEV of Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra has been calculated at over US$22 billion.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that a live tiger is more valuable than a dead one.