NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - PROOF
July 2, 2014
Sharon Guynup


Our driver turned off one of Nagpur’s main thoroughfares, leaving the honking chaos of urban Indian traffic behind us. We pulled into the bucolic tropical campus that housed Forest Department offices. At the gate we were stopped and questioned by guards who meticulously checked our credentials and called their superiors before finally waving us inside. Security was high: The confiscated tiger skins that Steve Winter and I had come to film and photograph for National Geographic were worth a small fortune on the black market—and forest officials had been gunned down in heists of tiger contraband before

When we arrived, guards were laying out the pelts for us, carrying them with great tenderness and a solemnity that made me feel like I was attending a funeral. Some of the skins had been processed into rugs, with heads still attached, gazing at us with marble eyes. Others were desiccated, with shrunken heads.

That footage became part of a video on India’s illegal tiger trade and a blog post on why tigers are “walking gold.”

It was the kind of assignment that both breaks your heart and drives you to continue.

read more