U.K. woman tried to sell extinct tiger skins online

Intriguingly, the news reports indicate *both* skins were younger than the 1947 cut-off point for legality, and dated to the 1970's - if accurate this means the Bali Tiger survived 40 years longer than generally believed.

That said, I suspect it is just as likely that the Bali skin *was* older than the cut-off point but they seized it anyhow thinking it was better to be safe than sorry.
 
I suspect that too. Being the skin of an extinct taxon it would surely be much better to have it properly conserved than run the greater risk of damage/destruction by non-museum staff.
 
I doubt the skins are really of these very rare subspecies. Perhaps DNA testing would verify it.

In any case, all tigers including circus hybrids are CITES, so selling any artifact is illegal without proper permits.
 
Jurek7 said:
In any case, all tigers including circus hybrids are CITES, so selling any artifact is illegal without proper permits.
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Not quite; this is where the 1947 cut-off point comes into play, as well as the fact that mounted specimens, tanned and lined skins and other such artifacts have been "worked" and are no longer classed as raw material.

The following is a quote from the relevant guidelines:

‘Worked’ antiques, however, enjoy an exemption from the controls. This is known as the antiques derogation. This states that an item shall be exempt from normal sales controls if it was acquired prior to June 1947 and has been significantly altered from its natural raw state for jewellery, adornment, art, utility or musical instrument before that date. Most taxidermy qualifies under the derogation too.

However, in May 2013, new guidance regarding the interpretation of the term ‘worked’ was issued by the European Commission. Many more items now require licences (a so-called Article 10 certificate) from the Wildlife
Licensing & Registration Service before they can be sold while ‘stricter measures’ governing the sale of unworked elephant ivory, rhinoceros horn and tiger parts mean that some of these items have effectively been banned.
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https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/media/6392/atg-cites-sept-2013.pdf

So, to come up with an incredibly unlikely example, if a Bali Tiger rug which was sold with proof it was older than 1947 turned up in an antique shop in Newcastle there would be *nothing* stopping the owner of said shop selling it to me without permits..... other than the extremely high price they would be asking ;)
 
there's not a lot about on this story, but I suspect they were both Javan skins. All the news reports are from one source so say pretty much exactly the same thing, and I suspect the original release was treating the skins as from "Java and Bali" (as a sort of collective place-name) rather than being a Javan tiger and a Bali tiger. The Crown Prosecution report is linked below and does not mention the actual subspecies, although it clearly reads as if both skins are Javan. My supposition would be that the woman may have been selling them as Javan and Bali but the latter was still a Javan.

Woman sentenced for illegal trade of tiger skins
30/09/2016

A woman has been given a six month suspended prison sentence at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court for attempting to sell two tiger skin rugs illegally on eBay in 2014.

Dovile Vaitkeviciute, 31, of Wood Green, London, also purchased one of the items illegally and then falsely claimed that it had been received as a gift in order to get the required licence from the Animal Plant and Health Agency to sell it.

The tiger is protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Both of the items were from a sub species of tiger that became extinct in the 1980s and one of the them was put on the auction site for £5,000. In order to trade items such as these, individuals need to be able to prove that their origin was prior to 1947, the item is tanned and lined and that they had been obtained legally. Carbon dating as part of the police investigation showed that the origin of both items was well after that date.

Yemi Awosika, CPS London reviewing lawyer, said: "The sale of items such as these is a highly lucrative criminal business that threatens the survival of tigers in the wild. That these items were from a species that is already extinct shows how critical it is that we prosecute this illegal criminal activity.

"Carbon dating confirmed that the origin of one of the skins was dated near the late 1970s. Sadly the sub-species of tiger that these skins came from became extinct in the 1980s and a prosecution expert said that this particular tiger may well have been one of the last of its kind.

"Vaitkeviciute attempted to bypass the legal sale of these items and has been convicted for her actions. This successful prosecution sends out a strong message to those involved that the illegal sale of wildlife items will not be tolerated. We are committed to working with our Defra and police colleagues to stamp out this illegal trade and support the preservation of our endangered species."
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I would think she was prosecuted for selling modern Tiger skins, rather than because of any known race/subspecies.

I imagine it would be very difficult to prove their exact provenance.
 
Pertinax said:
I would think she was prosecuted for selling modern Tiger skins, rather than because of any known race/subspecies.

I imagine it would be very difficult to prove their exact provenance.
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"We conducted an extensive search for specimens of extinct tiger subspecies, and also developed a simple on-site method to assign unprovenanced and probable Indonesian specimens to either Javan/Balinese or Sumatran subspecies."

Source:

Yamaguchi, Nobuyuki et al. (2013). Locating Specimens of Extinct Tiger (Panthera tigris) Subspecies: Javan Tiger (P. T. sondaica), Balinese Tiger (P. T. balica), and Caspian Tiger (P. T. virgata), Including Previously Unpublished Specimens. Mammal Study 38(3): 187-198. [Abstract]
 
Chlidonias said:
there's not a lot about on this story, but I suspect they were both Javan skins. All the news reports are from one source so say pretty much exactly the same thing, and I suspect the original release was treating the skins as from "Java and Bali" (as a sort of collective place-name) rather than being a Javan tiger and a Bali tiger. The Crown Prosecution report is linked below and does not mention the actual subspecies, although it clearly reads as if both skins are Javan. My supposition would be that the woman may have been selling them as Javan and Bali but the latter was still a Javan.
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I found another article with a touch more information. In some of the other stories it was mentioned how the woman tried selling the second skin whilst under investigation for the first one (presumably because she is an idiot). In the story I'll link below it makes it clear the first skin was the one being sold as a Javan tiger skin, and the second one was being sold as a Bali tiger skin. The dating done upon the skins showed both were from well after 1947, so I suspect the woman was selling the second skin as a Bali tiger in order to try and avoid the CITES laws (i.e. because as a Bali tiger it would have to be older than 1947).

Woman sentenced in tiger skin rugs case - Boston Standard
Dovile Vaitkeviciute, of Trinity Avenue, Nottingham, was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for two years, during a hearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court. She was also fined £685 and ordered to do 180 hours of unpaid work after pleading guilty to trading in endangered species offences and making a false statement to obtain a certificate permitting the sale of a tiger skin. Police found Vaitkeviciute had put two tiger skin rugs up for sale without having the correct certification. A "Javan" tiger skin rug was spotted on an online auction site by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Wildlife Crime Unit, who seized it from Vaitkeviciute's home in Haringey in May 2014. Animal rugs are classed as antiques if the creature was killed prior to 1947. Antique rugs do not require a certificate to be sold, but carbon-dating techniques revealed the tiger which made the "Javan" rug had been killed in the late 1970s. During the investigation, Vaitkeviciute offered another skin rug for sale online, claiming it was a "Bali" tiger. She said it had been given to her as a gift and had been made before 1947.

But detectives discovered Vaitkeviciute had paid £2,500 for the skin and had provided false information to authorities to get a certificate to sell it. It was also ruled that the tiger had been killed after 1947. Detective Constable Sarah Bailey, of the Metropolitan Police, said: "There are guidelines for dealers in endangered species and in some cases it is clear that the dealers are aware of the regulations but take the decision to disregard them for financial gain.
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