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  PlanetArk 27 Sep 05
China Tiger Trade Would Doom Species, WWF Says

WWF website 26 Sep 05
Re-opening of tiger trade in China spells disaster, says WWF and TRAFFIC

Gland, Switzerland / Beijing, China – Plans being considered in China to test the viability of re-opening the domestic trade in tigers and their parts, banned since 1993, would spell disaster for the already critically endangered species, according to WWF, the global conservation organization, and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

WWF and TRAFFIC believe that the re-opening of the trade of captive bred tigers for traditional medicine from so-called “tiger farms” for sales in China’s domestic market would threaten the world’s remaining wild tiger populations. Tiger bone has been used as a treatment for rheumatism and related ailments for thousands of years in traditional Asian medicine.

“This could be the final act that drives the tiger towards extinction," said Dr Susan Lieberman, Director of WWF's Global Species Programme. "We’re afraid that poachers living near the world’s last populations of tigers may kill them to supply illegal markets that are likely to develop alongside any new legal ones.”

The opening of the trade would also send the wrong signal to consumers, who may think it is acceptable to buy tiger parts, whether tiger bone in eastern China or tiger skins in western China, according to WWF and TRAFFIC.

The world’s tigers are at a record low, numbering around 5,000. The domestic trade ban in China in 1993 gave a welcome boost to tiger conservation by curbing demand for tiger products from other range states such as India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Indonesia.

“If this goes ahead, it will undo all the excellent work the Chinese government has done over the last 12 years,” said Steven Broad, Executive Director TRAFFIC International. “China has led by example in the past by imposing harsh penalities on wildlife trade criminals and through determined enforcement measures. To go back on all this, especially when there are alternatives for use in traditional medicine, just doesn’t make sense.”

Pressure is also increasing on Asian big cats because of a rapidly growing market for Asian tiger and leopard skins in Tibetan regions, with animals illegally hunted every year throughout their range to meet this market demand.

In August, in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, TRAFFIC investigators found 23 shops in the city’s main square openly selling skins and parts of tigers and leopards.

WWF and TRAFFIC are also calling on authorities in the region to curb the demand for Asian big cat skins and parts, and strengthen enforcement efforts along trade routes, in transit markets and markets in Asia.

PlanetArk 27 Sep 05
China Tiger Trade Would Doom Species, WWF Says

BEIJING - A reopening of Chinese business in tiger parts could doom the species to extinction and undermine efforts to curb other illegal wildlife trade, the Worldwide Fund for Nature warned on Monday.

Tiger organs, teeth, bones and penises fetch high prices on the black market, where they are used in traditional Chinese medicines to treat ailments like rheumatism. In other parts of Asia, the bones are considered an aphrodisiac.

China banned domestic trade in all tigers and tiger parts in 1993, but is considering re-opening the business based on farm-bred, captive animals. But that would send a signal that it is acceptable to buy tiger parts which would threaten wild tiger populations, experts in the wildlife trade said.

"We're afraid that poachers living near the world's last populations of tigers may kill them to supply illegal markets that are likely to develop alongside any new legal ones," Susan Lieberman, head of WWF's Global Species Programme, said in a statement. "This could be the final act that drives the tiger towards extinction."

International trade in all tigers and tiger products is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. But the global illegal wildlife trade is worth about $8 billion a year, according to the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society, and illegal sales of pelts of tigers and other rare big cats have been surging in Tibetan regions of western China.

"In the past few years there has been a revitalisation of wearing traditional clothing, partly due to officials wearing such things are events and being broadcast in the media," Samuel Lee, a Hong Kong-based official with wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC, told Reuters.

Tiger skins sold for anything between $2,500 and $25,000, Lee said.

The WWF said it was not clear how soon a re-opening of the tiger trade in China might happen, but speculated officials were being pressure by business interests. "One would guess there is a lobby from tiger farms for profits," said Joanna Benn, of the WWF's Species Programme.

The world's tigers are at a record low, numbering at an estimated 5,000-7,000, down from more than 100,000 in the 19th century. Chinese state media said last year that native South China tigers, among the rarest of the world's five remaining tiger subspecies, were on the verge of extinction in the wild with less than 30 alive. The Siberian tiger, native to northern China, southern Russia and parts of North Korea, is also on the brink, with only a few hundred believed to be living outside captivity.

Earlier this month, state media reported a restaurant in northeast China had been shut by police after claiming to serve dishes made with tiger meat taken from animals in the nearby Hengdaohezi Siberian tiger park, China's largest centre for breeding the animals. After he was arrested by police, the restaurant owner confessed the alleged tiger flesh was actually donkey meat spiked with tiger urine.
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