China And Its Friends Push Tiger Farm Idea

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China And Its Friends Push Tiger Farm Idea

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=57514 & nfid=nl

 

China And Its Friends Push Tiger Farm Idea

27 Nov 2006

 

Could farming tigers prevent wild ones from being hunted into

extinction? That is the claim made this week by the Liberty

Institute, a free-market think tank based in New Delhi, India. It

makes conservationists fear that China is preparing to vastly expand

tiger farming so that tiger body parts, used in traditional

medicines, and skins can be sold on the international market.

 

The Liberty Institute estimates that about 4000 tigers are being

reared in a handful of Chinese farms. Chinese law forbids the killing

of these animals, so breeders are supposed to wait until the tigers

die of natural causes before selling their parts, says Eric

Dinerstein, chief scientist for the conservation organisation WWF,

based in Washington DC.

 

Several conservation groups say that China may be preparing to lift

such restrictions and start trading tiger parts internationally. It

wants to open up the market, says Debbie Banks of campaign group the

Environmental Investigation Agency in London. Barun Mistra, managing

trustee of the Liberty Institute, says the grounds for farming tigers

are sound. In a talk on 15 November in Washington DC, Mistra argued

that commerce, not conservation, was needed to protect wild tigers.

Mistra did not respond to New Scientist's request for an interview,

but his views, and the fact that he has worked closely with the

Chinese authorities, are well known in conservation circles. He

believes that by flooding the market with cheap farmed-tiger

products, it will become uneconomic to hunt wild tigers, and millions

of dollars can be raised to conserve them. China has been banging

this drum for some time. Last month a Chinese official argued that

farming bears for their bile has boosted their numbers in the wild

(New Scientist, 14 October, p 6).

 

The UK branch of the World Society for the Protection of Animals,

based in London, disputes these claims and says that farming animals

in this way perpetuates the illegal market. Dinerstein agrees.

Describing Mistra's proposals as " insidious " he says that legalising

trade in endangered animal parts makes it more difficult to police

the illegal trade. What is more, he says, people will still hunt

tigers because wild tiger parts sell for more than those from farms.

A Chinese delegate raised the issue at a recent committee meeting of

the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild

Fauna and Flora (CITES). " They were proposing the opening of domestic

trade in tiger parts, " Banks says. However, CITES is only concerned

with international trade, so there appeared to be no real purpose in

the Chinese move. The Chinese were testing the water, Banks says.

 

To take advantage of the huge overseas demand for tiger parts and

start trading internationally, China would need approval from other

CITES member states, says David Morgan, chief scientist to the CITES

secretariat, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Whether it could gain such

approval on the grounds of conservation remains to be seen.

 

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