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Shoot-Out on China’s High Plains

The world’s growing demand for shahtoosh has left a trail of bloodshed. From 1990 through 1998, Chinese authorities documented 100 cases of chiru poaching. They confiscated 17,000 chiru pelts and about 2,400 pounds of chiru wool, as well as 300 guns and 153 vehicles used by poachers. Some 3,000 people were arrested and at least three poachers shot dead. Between December 1999 and February 2000, another 1,539 pelts were seized, along with rifles, ammunition, and vehicles.

In many instances, anti-poaching teams were outnumbered and outgunned by packs of poachers with more sophisticated weapons and better vehicles. Soinam Darje, who headed an anti-poaching patrol credited with many arrests, became a national hero in China when he was killed in a gunfight with poachers in January 1994. At least one other government official trying to save chiru from poachers has been killed in action.

TRAFFIC, the global wildlife-trade monitoring program of World Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Union, continues to investigate the chiru trade. In the late 1990s, TRAFFIC India confirmed that, where chiru wool is concerned, all smuggling routes lead to the famed weavers in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Some routes take the wool from the high plains of China directly over mountain passes and into Kashmir, while others cross Nepal and go through various Indian states before arriving in Kashmir. More recently, smugglers were detouring through other parts of China, such as Sichuan Province, to avoid increased law enforcement efforts.

The wool travels by horseback, truck, train, and airplane. It may be hidden in shipments of wool from domestic animals, including angora wool and cashmere (also known as pashmina), a near-equivalent of shahtoosh. The contraband is sometimes stuffed inside jackets and blankets. At the lowest and only driveable pass between China and Nepal, customs officials in 1998 found a cache of about 480 pounds of chiru wool behind a false ceiling in a truck carrying sheep’s wool.