Friday, February 13, 2015
A Siberian tiger tries to catch a chicken released by a gamekeeper to entertain visitors at the Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin
"How ferocious, he doesn't let
anyone come near him," said one visitor over the sound of crunching
bones, as she recorded the grisly scene on her smartphone.
Buying chickens to feed the
exhibits at the Siberian Tiger Park in northeast China's Harbin city
costs 60 yuan ($10) -- though the menu has plenty of other choices, even
cows are available to serve up.
But wildlife protection
campaigners allege such parks, along with the dedicated tiger breeding
centres or "farms" dotted around the country, actually make their big
money selling on body parts from the big cats when they die -- a
practise which potentially further threatens the endangered species.
Global tiger numbers have
plummeted from 100,000 a century ago to only 3,000 in the wild today,
according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,
which classes them as endangered, with poaching and habitat loss primary
threats to their survival.
China's tiger farm industry says
the trade in captive animals helps to relieve the pressure on wild
felines, but wildlife groups argue it reduces the stigma around buying
the animals or their body parts, and could create new markets for them.
Debbie Banks, head of the
London-based NGO the Environmental Investigation Agency, said that such
sales of the body parts of captive tigers was "stimulating demand and
sustaining the poaching pressure."
"Raising a tiger to maturity in captivity costs more than poaching a tiger in the wild," she told AFP.
"Wild tigers, leopards and snow leopards are targeted as a cheaper alternative to skins of captive bred tigers."
Figures from TRAFFIC, the
wildlife trade monitoring network, show that from the turn of the
millennium, at least 1,590 tigers were poached around the world up to
April 2014 -- an average of two a week.
Among the 13 countries with
native tiger populations, numbers are increasing in India and Nepal,
which do not have tiger farms, said Banks. But in Laos, Vietnam,
Thailand and China, where tigers can legally be bred for commercial
purposes, wild populations are struggling.
At the same time captive tiger
numbers are soaring in China, with up to 6,000 -- twice the global wild
population -- in about 200 farms across the country.
Wanted dead or alive
Used for entertainment when the
tigers are alive, what happens to the skins and bones of animals that
die in captivity is a murky issue.
Tiger bones have long been an
ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine, supposedly for a capacity to
strengthen the human body.
China banned trade in tiger bones
in 1993, but the law is regularly flouted, campaigners say.
Legislation
is also unclear on whether cats bred in captivity are considered
endangered in China, and there is little regulation around what needs to
be declared when they die.
The animal is considered a symbol
of prestige for many in China, with tiger pelt rugs sought-after luxury
items, along with tiger bone wine -- bottles labelled with tiger images
sell for nearly 5,000 yuan ($800) at the park shop in Harbin.
In December, a wealthy Chinese businessman who bought, slaughtered and ate three tigers was jailed for 13 years.
The gang involved had killed 10
tigers in total, domestic media reported, some of them smuggled in alive
"from Southeast Asian countries."
The tigers cost them 200,000 to
300,000 yuan ($48,000) each, and they reaped profits of more than
100,000 yuan per animal, reports said.
Chinese tiger purchases came
under scrutiny at an anti-poaching conference in Nepal last week
attended by around 100 experts, government and law officials from tiger
habitat nations.
Campaigners say that the mere
availability of "farmed" tiger products fuels the demand, which Mike
Baltzer, leader of the WWF Tigers Alive Initiative, described as "so
huge that it's very difficult to address the issue."
"When you have a cultural
perception among wealthy people in China that owning a tiger is a matter
of prestige, you can't change it overnight," he said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong
Lei insisted that Beijing was taking action to tighten laws against
poaching, adding: "We have adopted a recovery plan on China’s wild
tigers and work to improve the habitats of wild tigers."
Big cat in a bottle?
There are only about 45 wild
tigers in China, according to EIA. But there are more than 1,000 at the
Siberian Tiger Park, which was launched in 1986 with just eight animals.
Park representatives have
repeatedly been quoted saying that the trade in captive-bred tiger
products reduces pressure on wild animals, and that they hope to
reintroduce some of their creatures into the wild.
But repeated requests by AFP for comment on whether they sell on the dead animal parts or use them in products went unanswered.
In the park's souvenir shop "bone strengthening wine" is sold in elaborate bottles adorned with tigers.
A shop assistant denied to a foreign visitor that tiger bone was an ingredient.
But when AFP telephoned the shop
an employee gave a different impression, saying: "In order to avoid the
penalties for selling tiger-bone wine, the name was changed from 'tiger
bone wine' to 'bone strengthening wine.'"
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