Chinese bid to lift ban on tiger trade will result in extinction, say conservationists
Friday, 18 May 2007
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China's tiger farmers are stepping up pressure on the government in Beijing to lift the country's ban on trading products made from tigers, which conservationists believe could signal the end for the endangered big cats. The tiger breeders are seeking support from India in their efforts to end the ban.
The trade in tiger products is big business - the black market is worth hundreds of millions of pounds every year. Tiger bone is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat joint ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis, while wine made from tiger blood is believed to give potency.
Nearly every part of the tiger can be used for medicine, and its skin is prized in Tibet, making it a lucrative commodity for poachers in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and China.
The Chinese government banned the trade in tiger parts in 1993, but there are reports of tiger skins and other parts being sold on the black market in China, and restaurants selling dishes containing tiger.
An eight-member Chinese delegation of State Forestry Administration (SFA) officials met senior officials of India's Ministry of Environment and Forests to discuss lifting the ban, prompting Indian conservationists to call for greater efforts to make the Chinese ban permanent.
"At a time when the tiger is already facing threats such as habitat loss and poaching, China's move to lift the ban will only compound the problem further," said Sujoy Banerjee, of WWF-India's species conservation programme. "The Indian government should take a strong stance on this issue in the interest of tiger conservation in India, which has the world's largest population of tigers in the wild."
There were tens of thousands of big cats in the wild just 20 years ago, but poaching and the loss of their natural habitat has seen their numbers dwindle to around 3,000 worldwide, and it is feared the wild tiger could become extinct. Most tigers are in India, where figures have dropped from 40,000 a century ago to as few as 1,200. Attempts to eradicate the black market by cracking down on poachers and banning products made from tiger parts have failed, especially in China.
Between 1999 and 2005, nearly 650kg of tiger and leopard bones were seized from China, India and Nepal, destined for use in China. The contraband tiger parts are smuggled by well-organised networks, which also trade in rhino horn and other rare animal parts for use in Chinese medicine.
The tiger is iconic in Chinese culture and history. One of the most beautiful places in the country is a section of the Yangtze known as Tiger Leaping Gorge, where the story is that tigers would cross the mighty current by leaping from stone to stone.
The tigers are long gone from Tiger Leaping Gorge and China now has just 20 or 30 tigers in the wild, and they are reportedly migrating towards the relative safety of Russia's forests.
To get round the ban, a number of entrepreneurs have set up more than 100 private tiger breeding centres or farms which are big tourist draws, and collectively house about 5,000 tigers.
Some of the tiger parts sold in China come from these farms, once the animals have died of natural causes, although the WWF believes many of these breeding centres are just fronts for the illegal tiger trade.
Last month, the Global Tiger Forum, an inter-government group of countries which have tiger populations, met in Kathmandu to plan strategies to save the tigers. Chinese farmers lobbied the meeting to lift the ban.
The business interests behind the farms and the breeders argue that legalising the trade would help to preserve the big cats because it would be a regulated business with less poaching.
A report by WWF and the wildlife trade monitoring programme Traffic says lifting the ban on trading products made from tigers "is likely a death sentence for the endangered cats". They say legalising the tiger trade would lead to a huge rise in demand for parts, which would result in more poaching in countries like India, which is struggling to save its big cats, because it is cheaper to kill a wild animal than to raise a tiger on a farm.
Chinese government officials are expected to ask permission to lift the ban at the next meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in The Hague next month.
