This West Bengal Couple Are On A Road Trip With A Noble Cause, Campaign To 'Save Tigers'

A West Bengal have started a motorbike tour with an aim to send out a loud message among the masses to save tigers, kicking off a campaign "Journey For Tigers".

The duo - Rathindra Das and Gitanjali commenced their journey on February 15 from West Bengal and so far has visited as many as 28 states including Odisha and five Union territories.

"I start my tour of India with Gitanjali on February 15, 2019, with campaigning "Journey For Tigers" from West Bengal. We visit Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Panjab, Chandigarh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat and many more states of India.

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We have completed 28 states with 35 thousand kilometers and convinced around 26,000 people on tour," said Rathindra Das while speaking to ANI.

"The aim of this journey is to spread awareness among people about the actual role of tigers in human life. We can take a breath in the open sky due to forest and forest is only left out owing to tigers. We touch not only urban and rural areas but also tiger reserve centers of the states. I entered Satkosia tiger reserve in the morning in Odisha," he added.

Das also informed ANI that he got sponsorship from his social media connections and a couple of close friends.

According to a report released by TRAFFIC, an international non-profit working on trade in wild animals and plants, an average of 124 tigers were killed each year between 2000 and 2018.

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In the last 18 years, body parts of as many as 2,359 big cats were seized across 32 countries and territories globally, read the report Skin and Bones Unresolved: An Analysis of Tiger seizures from 2000-2018. Most of these seizures occurred in India, the last bastion of tigers.

"There were a total of 1,142 seizure incidents worldwide. Out of these, 95.1 per cent (or 1,086 incidents) occurred in the 13 Asian tiger range countries, accounting for 2,241 tigers," according to the report.

"On average, 60 seizures were recorded annually, which means body parts from almost 124 tigers were seized each year. The top three countries with the highest number of seizure incidents were India (463 or 40.5 per cent of total seizures), China (126 or 11.0 per cent) and Indonesia (119 or 10.5 per cent)," it added.

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While these seizures also included parts of other animals -- mostly bears and elephants -- around 66 per cent were those of tigers. Tiger skin accounted for 40 per cent of the total seized parts (equivalent to 1,099 whole skins).

"Almost 58 tigers are estimated to have been poached for their skins on an average every year. The seizure of whole animals -- both live (382) and dead (416) -- has seen an upward trend since 2016. While a total of 798 whole animals (29.0 per cent of the total) were seized over this 19-year period, the proportion seized from just 2016-2018 alone ranged from 44.0 per cent to 73.0 per cent annually," the report read.

(With ANI Inputs)