Conservation groups are renewing calls for China to maintain a
15-year moratorium on the trade in tiger parts with a poll showing
95 percent of Chinese support the ban.
The Save the Tiger Fund, which commissioned the poll, said 1,880
members of the public in seven major cities were asked about their
use of tiger products, their preferences for products from wild
tigers and China's 1993 tiger-trade ban.
The results showed almost 95 percent of respondents supported
the ban. More than 77 percent of those felt the ban was important
for China's image. Almost 95 percent said they would take action to
save wild tigers, including abstaining from the use of tiger
products.
"The results ... present the strikingly clear message that most
Chinese people care so much about wild tigers that they are willing
to change behaviors that threaten survival of tigers in the wild,"
said Judy Mills, of the fund.
The poll also showed almost 50 percent of people had consumed
what they thought were tiger products. Among these consumers,
almost 66 percent of medicine users preferred products from wild
tigers and 74 percent of tonic users favored ingredients from wild
over farmed tigers.
"The preference for products from wild tigers ... confirms our
fears that lifting the ban will send the message to poachers that
it's open season on tigers, which would be disastrous for wild
tigers," said Grace Gabriel, from the International Fund for Animal
Welfare (IFAW).
Gabriel admitted that more campaigns were needed to educate the
public, but warned the situation would only get worse if the ban
was lifted.
She said tigers were already being killed for the black market
trade, referring to a Siberian tiger that was skinned and
decapitated at a private zoo in Yichang, central China's Hubei
Province, last month. Local police are investigating, but have
published no findings.
The IFAW and other tiger protection groups are supporting a new
website -- www.ilaohu.org -- that aims to influence government
decisions on the ban. Ilaohu translates as "love tigers" and
the website, operated by a Beijing design firm, presents itself as
a "platform of communication for all tiger-loving people". It
offers quizzes, picture downloads, and even anecdotes of Chinese
pop singers calling themselves the "old tiger band".
The new international efforts came after several of horrific
tiger deaths, resulting from under-funding of private parks. In
November, a Siberian tiger in a northeast China zoo was killed and
eaten by four underfed tigers. Seven tigers have died of
starvation, illness and fight wounds at the Yichang park where the
Siberian tiger was beheaded.
The shortage of funds has been held up as one of the main
arguments for ending the ban by tiger farms and parks eager to ease
their financial problems. China has about 5,000 captive-bred
tigers, and 1,000 tigers are being bred each year.
Calls to the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park, one of the parks
spearheading calls to end the ban, went unanswered on Sunday.
China joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1981, and imposed a ban
on the harvesting of tiger bones in 1993, starting a long-running
debate between pro-traders and conservationists.
The pro-trade side insists that the parts of dead captive-bred
tigers should be used, and promises stronger supervision to prevent
poaching of wild tigers. The medicinal use and a belief in the
success of reintroducing farmed tigers to the wild are their
supporting arguments.
But conservationists argue the captive-breeding program can't
succeed and want the government to halt the breeding of captive
tigers and start phasing out the farms.
Sources with Chinese forestry ministry said in July last year
that the government was still carrying out research and gathering
the views of other countries, and the ban would not be lifted in
the near future.
(Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2008)