FACTBOX-Why are Asia's endangered animals so sought after?

(Reuters) - Home to tigers, bears, pangolins and many of the world's other rarest animals, Asia is also a hotspot for the illegal wildlife trade which the international police organization Interpol estimates may be worth more than $20 billion a year.

Here are some facts about three of the continent's endangered animals and their commercial uses.

BEARS:

-- All of the world's eight species of bears are endangered, and five of them live in Asia.

-- Paws from the Asiatic Black Bear and the Malaysian Sun Bear are used to make bears paw soup, and bile from their gall bladders -- dubbed "liquid gold" because of its astronomical price -- is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) remedies said to cure eye irritations, fevers and liver problems.

-- Bear bile is a legal product in China and North Korea, but banned elsewhere as the Asiatic Black Bear is a CITES* Appendix I animal. Chinese bear farms are thought to supply black-market overseas networks, and have been accused of buying bears from poachers in Myanmar and other neighbouring countries to fill the bear farms which milk caged captives for bile.

TIGER:

-- Three of the world's nine tiger sub-species fell extinct last century, and many scientists believe a fourth, the South China tiger is already "functionally extinct".

-- Poached from forests and sold to traders for as little as $10, almost every part of Asia's biggest big cat has commercial value. Skins are sold as rugs and cloaks on the black market, where a single skin can fetch as much as $20,000. Tiger meat is marketed as giving "strength", and bones are ground into powders or immersed in vats of wine to make curative "tiger bone wine" tonics for the TCM market.