Saving tigers by selling them

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

 

 

" Saving " tigers by selling them

 

 

JAKARTA--The Year of the Tiger on the Chinese calendar opened

on February 14, 2010 with schemes to " save " tigers that posed

perhaps a greater threat to tiger welfare and wild tiger survival

than even aggressive poaching that has cut the wild tiger population

in half since the last Year of the Tiger in 1998.

For nine days in January 2010 the Indonesian wildlife

protection organization ProFauna enjoyed a rare victory against both

tiger poaching and the exploitation of captive tigers. ProFauna

helped to send the most brazen tiger poacher in memory to prison,

for the August 22, 2009 pre-dawn killing and butchery of a

20-year-old tiger named Sheila in her cage at the Taman Rimba Zoo in

Jambi, capital of Jambi province.

" As result of ProFauna's intensive lobbying to the police and

forestry department, " ProFauna international communication officer

Butet Sitohang e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE, " the [apprehended]

perpetrator on January 11, 2010 received a three-year-and-ten-month

prison sentence and a fine of one million Indonesian rupiah, " worth

about $107 U.S. The maximum prison sentence that the convicted perp

could have received would have been five years. Killing Sheila was

reportedly at least his third convicted offense.

But the poacher's scheme was picayune compared to the notion

floated on January 20, 2010 by Indonesian director general of forest

protection and nature conservation Darori, who uses no surname.

Darori proposed that his agency should sell tigers as pets, at the

equivalent of $107,100 U.S. apiece.

" This idea came about after several wealthy businessmen

proposed buying them, " ministry official Didi Wuryanto told Agence

France-Press. " But we're not in it for the money. We want to save

the tigers, " Didi Wuryanto insisted.

Purchasers would be required to keep pet tigers in cages not

less than 16 feet high, 19 feet wide, and 32 feet long.

Like counterparts in China, India, and Thailand, who have

challenged the Con-vention on International Trade in Endangered

Species prohibition on trans-border sales of captive tigers and parts

in recent years, Darori argued that tigers can best be preserved as

a quasi-domesticated species.

" Conservation of wildlife, including tigers, should be

taken up as an enterprise, " agreed Indian former principal chief

conservator of forests S. Parameshwarappa a few days later. " Farmed

tiger products could be sold to countries like China where there is a

demand. Money from this venture can be invested back into

conservation, " Paramesh-warappa told The Hindu.

But Darori's proposal differed from the schemes advanced by

Parameshwarappa and others, in that it would put potential tiger

breeding stock into private hands, without overtly involving the

Indonesian government in tiger farming.

Darori spoke just as the Worldwide Fund for Nature introduced

an Adopt-a-Tiger fundraising theme for 2010. But WFN, known in the

U.S. as the World Wildlife Fund, recommended adopting tigers only in

the metaphorical sense--at least officially. As the leading

exponents of " sustainable economic use " of wildlife since 1961, the

Worldwide Fund for Nature does not oppose commercialization of

wildlife if it contributes to the survival of species in the wild.

Both Darori and Parameshwarappa spoke on the eve of the first

Asian ministerial conference on tiger conservation, held in Hua Hin,

Thailand. The ministers resolved to double the wild tiger population

before the 2022 Year of the Tiger.

But this resolution appeared to be seen by at least some of

the ministers as an invitation to breed even more tigers in captivity

than the thousands of captive tigers who already exist, on the

pretext of eventually " re-introducing " some to habitat which mostly

no longer exists--with the admitted goal of removing captive-bred

tigers from CITES Appendix I, so that tigers and tiger parts may be

freely sold. " Close to 6,000 tigers have been artificially bred and

raised in China, " said Yin Hong, vice head of the China State

Forestry Administration. China " can breed over 1,000 baby tigers

every year, " Yin Hong told the China News Service.

The world now has just 3,200 wild tigers, according to

official estimates. India, with the most wild tigers, claims

1,411. China, with the fewest wild tigers among nations known to

still have any, may have as few as 20, all of them of the far

northern Amur subspecies.

Darori in advancing the sale of tigers as pets did not

mention that trying to preserve tigers in the wild is costly,

inconvenient for development schemes, and dangerous for humans who

live or herd livestock near tigers.

These issues were already evident when Jim Corbett in 1944

assessed them in Man-Eaters of Kumaon, the first book-length plea

for saving wild tigers. After decades of hunting tigers who killed

humans in hopes that other tigers would become better tolerated,

Corbett came to fear that tigers were doomed by human economic

interests--and that was before the present demand for tiger parts for

use in " traditional Chinese medicine " emerged.

Truly traditional Chinese medicine is mostly herbal. The

" medicinal " market for wildlife parts, like the bushmeat trade in

Africa, exploded from obscurity to menace entire species mostly

after logging, road-building, and plantation clearing gave poachers

unprecedented access to wildlife.

Commerce in wildlife parts and bushmeat developed first to

exploit displaced animals. As demand grew, a business niche opened

for farming species such as tigers who breed readily in

captivity--but raising animals in captivity remains far more costly

than poaching them. Tiger breeders, however, can offset the

expense of raising tigers by exhibiting them. And, while poaching

Sheila at the Taman Rimba Zoo shocked Indonesia, hardly anyone

notices the turnover of cubs at many zoos, where some are almost

constantly on display at photo concessions, drugged and accessible

to cuddling.

Until under 20 years ago such practices occurred often at

U.S. zoos too. But reinforcements to federal law and to the American

Zoo Association code of ethics mostly ended the involvement of

AZA-accredited zoos in back-door tiger dealing before tiger parts

became big business. Seventeen people were convicted in 2001-2002 of

selling tigers from U.S. roadside zoos to canned hunts and

trafficking their parts. Since then the racket, if it persists,

has had a low profile.

Tiger parts are the main business for several of the largest

and most notorious Chinese tiger exhibitors. " With pelts selling for

$20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a

dead tiger has never been higher, " reported Andrew Jacobs of the New

York Times on February 13, 2010. " If there is any mystery about

what happens to the big cats at Xiongsen Tiger and Bear Mountain

Village in Guilin, it is partly explained in the gift shop, " where

tiger bone wine is sold.

" Opened in 1993 with financing from the state forestry

administration, Xiongsen is China's largest tiger-breeding

operation, " Jacobs added. " Some of its 1,500 tigers roam treeless

fenced areas, while many others are packed in small cages where they

agitatedly pace. "

Similar scenes are often reported from the Harbin Siberian

Tiger Park, along with feeding cattle and poultry to tigers alive,

to thrill paying visitors. Several other such facilities are known

to exist. Live feeding is illegal at Chinese zoos that are regulated

as zoos, but the tiger farms, though open to the public, are

regulated by a different agency.

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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