Experts plea for global action to save tigers

Tigers will become extinct unless the international community unites urgently to find new strategies to ensure their survival, campaigners and scientists in Nepal said.

Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal told the opening of a conference of 200 delegates from 20 countries that action by individual countries would not succeed.

"Global and regional solidarity and collective strategies armed with concrete actions are more necessary now than ever," he said, adding that poaching and habitat loss posed the most serious threat to tigers' survival.

Tiger hunting is illegal worldwide and the trade in tiger parts is banned under a treaty binding 167 countries, including Nepal.

But endangered species attract huge sums of money in China and elsewhere in Asia, with their body parts used in traditional medicines and aphrodisiacs while their skins are used for furniture and decoration.