Fashion blamed for animal deaths

The return of fur to the world’s fashion catwalks has spelled death to thousands of endangered animals with a boom in demand for their skins, a top wildlife protection officer said Friday.

John Sellar, senior enforcement officer for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, said there had been a surge in seizures of tiger and leopard skins as the fashion industry embraced fur once again.

“In the 1980s and 1990s, the illegal skin trade virtually ceased to exist because it was not fashionable,” he told a gathering of wildlife enforcement officers in London. “But we are seeing models going back into it and a consequent boom in the trade.”