July 19, 2005 — India's tiger and freshwater dolphin populations are rapidly dwindling as poachers kill the endangered species to feed a lucrative trade in traditional medicines, newspaper reports said Tuesday.

The tiger population at the Ranthambore Sanctuary in the western state of Rajasthan fell by almost half from a year ago as poachers killed the big cats to sell their body parts for traditional medicine, the Indian Express said.

The latest census showed 26 tigers this year compared to 47 in 2004, the newspaper reported.

The Times of India said the freshwater Ganges river dolphin is being wiped out for its oil, used as a cure for joint pains.

There are roughly 2,000 remaining Ganges river dolphins, a third of the number found in a 1980s census. Fishermen net them and slit them open to drain their oil, which sells locally for around 1,000 rupees ($23) a liter, The Times of India said.

The plight of endangered species in India has received top-level attention in the past year as international and local conservation groups have urged the government to protect shrinking habitats and prosecute poachers.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ordered a federal inquiry in February into reports that all 15 tigers in the state-run Sariska Tiger Sanctuary in Rajasthan had been killed for their pelts, claws and other body parts.

Singh also set up a "Tiger Taskforce" along with a National Wildlife Crime Prevention Bureau. His government admitted that poachers had managed to kill 122 of the endangered big cats in India between 1999 and 2003 despite a national conservation program.

Earlier this month, an Indian court approved a federal investigation of the country's most wanted animal poacher and smuggler Sansar Chand, who was arrested in New Delhi in late June.

A member of the outlawed Kanjaria hunter-trapper tribe, Chand was wanted in five Indian states on 20 separate counts of wildlife crimes. He is suspected of butchering all the tigers at Sariska.

Between 3,500 and 3,700 Bengal tigers are left in the wild in India, according to government estimates, down from about 40,000 before independence from Britain in 1947.