To ban or not to ban tiger part trade - the strangest of all discussions

[Guest guest]

*Asia's tiger economy*

*This week, a showdown in Kathmandu between conservationists and market

enthusiasts*

NIRMAL GHOSH in BANGKOK

 

*From Issue #344* (13 April 07 - 19 April 07) |

 

 

 

MARTIN HARVEY/WWF

*MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS: Legalising the trade in products derived

from farmed tigers will only fuel illegal poaching.*

 

A meeting in Kathmandu beginning on 16 April, will see many of the world's

top conservationists and wildlife trade specialists discussing China's new,

persistent effort to open up the trade in tiger parts.

 

China's government is close to lifting the 1993 ban on the trade to appease

influential businessmen who have been breeding tigers in 'farms' regardless

of the ban and now find themselves saddled with thousands of animals.

 

There is talk that Thailand—which has its own vested interests in

controversial 'tiger farms'—may quietly support China's effort to open up

the trade. After visiting conservationists recently disagreed publicly with

economists who support Beijing's pro-trade line, several of China's tiger

farmers came out in the open with a press conference demanding that the ban

be lifted. China's other argument is that millions stand to gain from the

medicinal properties of tiger bone.

 

This comes despite a significant proportion of Chinese traditional medicine

practitioners moving away from prescribing tiger bone. Tests in China have

proven that tiger bone is not much different to the bones of pigs, dogs or

goats—and is almost identical in composition to a high altitude rodent found

in plenty in China.

 

The trade in endangered wildlife is ranked third after arms and drugs. It is

run by powerful international criminal syndicates. Thailand is one of the

centres of the trade—both as a source for species and as a conduit; almost

every other month shipments of endangered species bound for China, are

detected and seized in Thailand as they pass through from Malaysia and other

countries.

 

If the ban on trading in tiger parts is lifted, parts from wild tigers

killed in the wild for a handful of baht, ringgit, or rupees will certainly

be laundered through legal channels. Tiger parts and products are already

surreptitiously and sometimes openly traded out of these farms. And farmed

tigers will always be more expensive than poached ones, doing little to

dampen the profitability of poaching.

 

China's 1993 ban was crucial in ensuring that tigers still exist in the wild

today, albeit in very small numbers. It is estimated that there are possibly

a little over 5,000 tigers left today in the forests of Asia. Most are in

India which possibly has close to 2,000. Thailand has around 400.

 

China has been lobbying international opinion to get the ban lifted.

Securing the approval of key tiger range countries like India, Russia,

Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Malaysia, is important to China. In

all these countries the tiger is clinging to the edge of extinction. India's

populations are small and isolated.

 

Indian tiger expert Valmik Thapar estimates that of India's 30 tiger

reserves, at least five may have no tigers at all. A sixth is proven to have

none left; they were all wiped out by poachers in 2004. Over the past two

months, 13 Asiatic lions have been killed by poachers in their last refuge

in India's Gir National Park. The poachers, caught last week, said they were

sending lion parts to China, where they would be passed off as tiger parts.

 

China has secured the support of a New Delhi-based economist, Barun Mitra,

who has visited China on invitation from state agencies several times. His

argument is seductive: opening up the trade in tiger parts will flood the

market, bringing down prices and hence reducing the incentive for poachers

to kill wild tigers.

 

But conservationists and trade experts believe opening up the trade even in

a limited experiment, will only stimulate demand in a market where years of

effort at curbing it have to some extent worked.

 

China says if tiger range countries do not want the ban on tiger parts

lifted, they should pay the farmers. After all, Chinese officials say,

millions of dollars are raised worldwide to conserve the tiger, but China

gets no credit.

 

Hardly any conservationist believes farming is the way to save endangered

species. Crocodiles are not a good example, because they are far cheaper to

breed than tigers. Besides breeding crocodiles has not helped the species in

the wild. Thailand breeds crocodiles but the Siamese crocodile remains

endangered. Neither does farming, say, pork, stop hunters from going after

wild boar.

 

Ullas Karanth of the New-York based Wildlife Conservation Society and one of

the world's foremost experts on tigers, cautions that the trade issue does

not address the drivers of the tiger's steady extermination: killing of the

tiger's prey base, and the conversion of its habitat to different land uses.

Over the last 300 years, tiger range has shrunk by 93 percent. ''Enforcement

on the ground is critical, " says Karanth. " Unless a culture of enforcement

is brought in, we will lose the tiger.''

 

Just as Indian and south east Asian authorities have been short on political

commitment to enforcement, so expecting China to be able to strictly

regulate an open market in tiger products is unrealistic. (counterpunch.com

)

 

*Nirmal Ghosh is the Thailand correspondent of The Straits Times and a

trustee of The Corbett Foundation in India. He runs the website **

http://www.indianjungles.com* <http://www.indianjungles.com/>* and can be

contacted at **tigerfire* <tigerfire*. *

 

 

--

Lucia de Vries

Freelance Journalist

Bagdol, Patan, Nepal

Wijk 4-47, 8321 GE Urk, Holland