Tibetans are setting fire to tiger skins and other exotic furs after the Dalai Lama personally called on his people to stop the trade in endangered animal pelts. Tibet has become the world’s leading market for the contraband, as Justin Huggler reports Published: 15 February 2006 A rich and unusual smoke has been drifting into the Tibetan skies. People have been emerging from their homes and burning furs and animal skins. Onlookers have gathered to watch as Tibetans burned tiger skins worth as much as £6,000 in the streets. Many have given up their chubas, traditional robes adorned with tiger skins that can cost the equivalent of two years’ wages for the average Tibetan, and watched happily as they went up in smoke. In one town, it is said you can see the smoking ruins of tiger skins and other furs along the roadside. These scenes are not part of some exotic ritual. They are part of a major new environmental drive among Tibetans that could prove decisive in whether the tiger survives in the wild, or is driven to extinction. They come after the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader in exile, personally intervened and called […]