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  The Star 29 May 07
Taste for tiger
A plan to farm tigers for their body parts is troubling wildlife groups.
Stories by Tan Cheng Li chengli@thestar.com.my

TIGERS, under threat in every single country where they roam, now face an alarming new peril – rekindled trading of their body parts.

China, insisting that selling tigers would save the species, proposes to lift a 14-year -old domestic trade ban and seeks legal sale of farmed tiger body parts. The issue will be raised next week at The Hague, The Netherlands, where 171 nations will gather from June 3 to 16 for talks under the world’s biggest wildlife treaty, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

Justifying its stand, China argues that conserving tigers in their natural habitat has not been effective; neither has the trade prohibition. It believes legitimising sale of meat, bones, organs and claws from farm-raised tigers would stem poaching of wild tigers.

Officials in Beijing are thought to be under pressure from tiger farm owners – who have an estimated 4,000 tigers – to put a commercial price on the carnivore.

China has an ally in Barun Mitra, director of the Liberty Institute, a pro-free-market think tank in New Delhi, India. Mitra has been making the case for farmed tiger trade in newspaper editorials and public appearances worldwide.

He has argued that if the market were flooded by farmed tiger products, prices would drop sufficiently to make poaching and smuggling no longer attractive or worth the risk.

But wildlife experts think otherwise. They fear that lifting the trade ban, in place since 1993, would spark an open season on the world’s remaining wild tigers, which number fewer than 5,000 across 13 countries.

Dr Susan Lieberman, director of WWF’s Global Species Programme, points out that the free-market approach was what led to the endangered status of the big cat in the first place.

“China once had one of the largest tiger populations in the wild and now has one of the smallest. Experts agree that this is due to the unregulated, out-of-control domestic market in tiger parts.”

The Chinese plan is grave enough for 35 organisations representing more than 100 environmental, zoo, animal protection groups worldwide to unite under the International Tiger Coalition (ITC) and oppose it.

The ITC argues that legalising trade in farmed tiger products will not curb poaching of wild tigers or stem demand for their body parts.

“Since wild tiger bone is thought to be superior medicinally, people would still prefer it. Products from wild tigers cannot be distinguished from farmed products, so legalising trade would provide a ‘cover’ for illegal tiger products,” says the ITC, which included groups such as Animals Asia Foundation, Conservation International, Environmental Investigation Agency, Global Tiger Patrol, Save the Tiger Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, World Association of Zoos and Aquarium, Zoological Society of London and WWF.

Far from satisfying demands for tiger products at low prices, the ITC says the cost of regulating trade in farmed tiger products would drive up their price, making the lower costs of poaching tigers even more attractive.

Chris Shepherd, programme officer of wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, says tiger-farming might well open the door for laundering of wild tigers, especially with the history of inadequate enforcement and weak regulations in tiger range countries in Asia.

“It will always be easier and cheaper to poach wild tigers and pass them off as captive -breds since chances of getting caught are slim, and right now there is no way of differentiating between the two,” he says.

“Reopening trade will drive up demand for tiger meat and parts, as it will attract new users who think it is okay to consume such products since the animals had been reared.”

Bred for business

Wildlife experts say raising wildlife commercially, in many cases, has not benefited wild populations.

Take the case of bear farming, which China started in the 1980s, to reduce pressure on wild stocks. The exact opposite is true. Wild bears are still poached, sometimes to replenish farms.

Indonesia’s sulphur-crested cockatoo is another example. Although bred in farms, it is still trapped in the wild and is now critically endangered. In markets, wild-caught birds are passed off as captive-breds and often, priced cheaper than farmed ones.

The Siamese crocodile shares a similar story. It breeds well in captivity but wild populations in Thailand still face extinction risks due to opportunistic trappings.

Cites only allows trade of bred Arowanas but it is still profitable to catch wild stocks since there is little chance of detection. Shepherd says these are sold to breeders who grow the fish until they reach a size suitable for insertion of identifying microchips, thus legalising the aquarium trade.

His covert work in Indonesia – where exports of totally protected species are prohibited except for some species which are captive-bred – shows traders passing off wild caught reptiles as farmed ones by falsifying export permits.

A commonly exploited species is the green tree monitor lizard.

“Some view captive-breeding as a conservation tool but without enforcement, regulation and monitoring, it is actually a threat to conservation of wildlife,” asserts Shepherd. “Countries like Malaysia, with a small and declining tiger population, should be wary of this and not support tiger-farming.”

Claims that farmed tigers will one day be placed into the wild will not happen as it would be too difficult and expensive. Scientists say released captive tigers lack hunting instincts and tend to venture into human settlements, leading to dire consequences.

Also, tiger farms breed for production rather than a healthy gene pool.

At Xiong Sen Tiger and Bear Farm, in China, tiger experts found cross-breeding of the Amur, South China and Bengal tigers.

Garnering support

Pressured by farms with exploding captive tiger populations, and which want trade to resume, China is earnestly seeking support for its plan.

Early this month, a delegation headed for India, home to the world’s largest wild tiger population. The Indian media reported lukewarm response from local officials.

India has the most to lose if tiger trading is rekindled. It lost more than half of its big cats in the past decade to a growing thirst for pelts by ethnic groups in Tibet and Southern China.

If China gets its way, many think it will almost certainly hasten the species’ march toward extinction. Asia has already lost three of its nine tiger species – the Caspian, Balinese and Javanese tigers.

The South China tiger appears to be next, with only 20 to 30 believed left in the wild.

Urging for the trade ban to stay, wildlife groups say the restriction has helped slow down illegal trade and in Russia, aided the Siberian tiger population to recover.

“Without the bans, wild tigers would be worse off than they are today. Existing bans can be even more effective with stepped-up, intelligence-led enforcement,” says the ITC.

For Dr Eric Dinerstein, chief scientist of World Wildlife Fund, a better way to conserve tigers is the simplest.

“We have seen rapid recovery of fast-breeding tiger populations wherever they and their prey are protected and given adequate space.”

It is also vital to dispel beliefs that tiger products are needed for health and sacred cultural practices, for if the nouveau riche of China, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia start acquiring a taste for tiger wine, penis and skins, then even all the tiger farms in China may not be able to satiate their appetites.

Those demands must be wiped out if wild tigers are to continue prowling the forest.

Reduced to meat and wine

IN China, rampant trade has shrunk the wild tiger population to only about 50 cats. Captive breeding was consequently hailed as the solution to save the species.

In recent years, however, animal rights advocates have lamented the conditions in China’s 20 privately owned tiger farms, and have argued for their closure.

The International Fund For Animal Welfare (IFAW) in a September 2006 report Made in China on illegal tiger bone trade, said: “... numerous zoos, wildlife parks and tiger farms in China breed and keep hundreds of tigers, often in abhorrent conditions. Many of the facilities stockpile tiger carcasses in the hope that legalised tiger trade one day will be reopened. Defying the domestic trade ban issued by China’s State Council, several of these facilities have already started selling tiger bone wine.”

At the biggest farms, busloads of visitors are driven around with tame tigers following behind. In some farms, tourists drive through enclosures and dangle live chickens from car windows to bait the big cats. In others, visitors watch tigers shred cows dumped out of passing trucks.

And tiger meat is on the menu in these parks, either stir-fried or stewed, and washed down with a glass or two of wine made from tiger bones.

The IFAW finds none of the facilities met international standards set for conservation breeding programmes. Their operations were aimed at commercial purposes, evidenced by the sales of entrance tickets, entertainment shows and products made from wildlife bred in the facilities.

Since 1993, China has banned domestic tiger trade and the use of tiger bone in traditional Chinese, in line with the global prohibition under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species but recent investigations indicate that illicit commerce in tiger parts is growing, and much of it occurs at tiger farms.

In February, Beijing-based Independent Television News reported that DNA tests confirmed that Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village near Guilin served tiger meat at its restaurant.

Last August, China Youth Daily reported that the same tiger farm, China’s biggest, was making tiger bone wine. Its cellar had over 400 vats of wine, each containing a tiger carcass.

In February last year, Shanghai Wildlife Park was found collaborating with a liquor factory to produce and sell a health-tonic made of bones from tigers killed by buses carrying tourists through the park.

In December 2002, a wildlife park in Sanya, Hainan, imported 100 Bengal tigers from the Sriracha Tiger Zoo Thailand.

Although wildlife officials contended that the tigers were imported for “non-commercial” purposes, a park spokesperson said the facility intended to breed the tigers so that consumers could “taste tiger meat.”

Thai investigations later found the import to be illegal, and the Thai facility has neither a breeding permit nor papers to confirm the origin of 218 tigers in its possession then.
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