Fwd: Stripes on sale by Jay Mazoomdar

[Guest guest]

An American TV show backs commercial breeding of tigers. But farming the big

cat, writes Jay Mazoomdaar, cannot save the species in the wild.

 

 

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STRIPES ON SALE

 

The cat is slowly coming out of the bag. For long, the world suspected

tacit official patronage of illegal tiger farms in China even after

Beijing was forced to ban trade in tiger parts in 1993. Then, before

the last meeting of the Conve­ntion on International Trade in

Endangered Species (CITES) in 2008, Chinese officials unsuccessfully

argued how the ban had cost their economy $4 billion and that

captive-bred tigers could sustain the trade and also replenish the

wild stock.

 

The farming lobby claims that providing a low-priced supply of tiger

parts to customers will reduce the profit margins of poachers, making

killing of wild tigers unviable. So their solution for saving tigers

from extinction is to breed them commercially in farms as we currently

breed chicken or cattle. This concept has many takers in the US, the

only country with a pet tiger population larger than China’s. But this

lobby also needs some support in India, the country with more than

half of the world’s remaining wild tigers, and the campaign is gaining

momentum.

 

First it was Barun Mitra, head of Liberty Institute who “visited China

as a guest of the government to learn about tiger conservation”. Then

it was Jaithirth Rao, India’s leading

banker-turned-entrepreneur-turned-columnist. And now it is John

Stossel, America’s star consumer reporter who anchors the highly

popular 20/20 show. Between them, they have occupied prime news space

on some top media organisations — New York Times, India Today, The

Indian Express, Hindustan Times and, of course, ABC News.

 

But for all that, sample this. To name only two reporters, Danny

Penman (Daily Mail) and Simon Parry (PostMagazine) documented last

year how the Xiongsen Park in Guilin, China, was farming tigers in

hundreds — each squeezed in like a battery hen — so that they could be

eaten or turned into wine.

 

While Penman mentioned 140 tigers in the freezer to be served up on a

menu as strips of stir-fried tiger with ginger and vegetables or tiger

soup or spicy red curry made with tender tiger strips, Parry recalls

the park’s sales manager Xhao Runghui ruing how he could not advertise

tiger wine in Beijing because the Olympics were coming up.

 

However gruesome the idea of consuming tiger meat or wine may sound,

it is not the reason why tiger farming is a remarkably dumb idea.

Ethics or values aside, tiger farming simply does not make any

economic or ecological sense.

 

First, farming only makes poaching more rewarding. Anyone who has an

idea of a tiger’s daily consumption would know how much it costs to

rear a tiger in captivity before it becomes “marketable”. If it must

bring a reasonable margin in the market, it cannot be low-priced. Wild

tigers virtually come for free and mean “total profit” to poachers. So

in an open market, a poacher’s incentives would actually be greater as

there would be no way to distinguish the bones of ‘farmed’ tigers from

those of wild tigers.

 

Second, the argument that tigers — like chicken or sheep — will never

go extinct if we farm them for consumption is misleading. Conservation

is not just about saving tigers from going extinct but saving the

tigers in the wild. Otherwise, we already have enough tigers in the

zoos to secure live specimens for many generations to come.

 

The challenge before us is to save the tiger in the wild, so that with

the tiger flourishing at the top of the food chain, everything down

the pyramid flourishes. If the pyramid is alive, so will be the

forests around it and the water systems that are sustained by such

forests.

 

The farming lobby often cites the example of crocodiles having become

successful commercial animals with an estimated two million harvested

each year in Australia, South Africa and the US. But crocodiles are

found in 91 countries and there are 23 surviving species. For each

tiger in the wild, there were always hundreds of crocodiles. However,

commercial success cannot save an endangered species in the wild. The

Chinese themselves could do precious little about their highly

endangered alligators. Despite repeated attempts at captive breeding

and release since 1979, to quote Xinhua, there are just about 150

Chinese alligators left in the wild.

 

And, finally, what about China’s own tiger experience? Their tiger

farms have been trading legally for years (with implicit official

support since 1993). Today, China has thousands of tigers in cages but

less than 50 survive poaching in the wild.

 

Unfortunately, reintroduction of captive-bred or farmed tigers in the

wild has never succeeded. No wonder even the Chinese plan to

reintroduce tigers bred in a South African zoo in its forests is yet

to take off.

 

So then, how do we save the tiger? Well, to borrow a phrase from the

farming lobby, by generating strong incentives. But for that we need

not domesticate and kill tigers. We have to integrate efficient

protection and practical management plans with popular participation.

As a rule, we have to involve the locals — not only for menial jobs —

but also in protection work and responsible tourism.

 

Protected well, our wilderness will not only ensure our food and water

security but also sustain a multi-billion dollar tourism industry. If

alive in the wild, the tiger will remain the ultimate mascot of that

economy.

 

— The writer is an independent journalist and filmmaker.

mazoomdaar

 

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