THE END OF THE TIGER

[Anonymous]

End of the tiger tale?
To
Valmik Thapar, it is a matter of principle, of human dignity, and
distortion of the traditional relationship between mankind and
nature.”To me it is disgusting,” he thunders. “It’s not civil to have
tiger farms; it’s not part of anyone’s dream.”The target of Mr Thapar’s
ire is a somewhat vague proposal from China to re-open the domestic
trade in tiger products.The trade has been banned for 14 years, and
using material from wild tigers would remain prohibited.Instead,
traditional medicine ingredients such as bone would be sourced from
animals kept in farms.There are thought to be at least five tiger farms
in China, housing about 5,000 animals, the majority born and bred in
captivity.

If there wasn’t a ban on the tiger trade, I assure you there wouldn’t be one single tiger left in India today
Valmik Thapar, Conservationist

The tiger could easily earn its keep and buy its way out of extinction, if we allow it to do so
Barun Mitra,Liberty Institute, Delhi

Astonishingly,
that is more tigers than remain in the wild.Animal welfare and
conservation groups are virtually united in their opposition.Re-opening
a domestic market would boost poaching for that market, they believe,
and would also lead to an increase in international trade, which would
remain illegal under the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES).A prominent conservationist who has spent 30
years observing India’s tigers, Valmik Thapar is under no illusions as
to what this would mean for the remaining wild populations, based
largely in India.”If there wasn’t a ban on the tiger trade, I assure
you there wouldn’t be one single tiger left in India today,” he told a
reception at this year’s CITES meeting in The Hague.But there was a
wider message. Tigers are wild creatures; that is how we used to treat
them and respect them, and putting them behind bars, denuding them of
their instincts and their traditional behaviours, has no place in a
world which claims to be civilised.

Closed doors
Tiger
farms sprang up in China in the 1980s, when the market was still
thriving.Bans on national and international trade stemmed the lucrative
stream of material flowing out of the farm gates. Some turned to
tourism for income.An information document which China is presenting at
this CITES meeting, entitled The Current Situation of Tiger Breeding
and the Facing Difficulties (sic) of the Guilin Xiongsen Tigers and
Bears Mountainvillage, laments the financial difficulties which one
farm is facing.”We need 50,000,000 RMB ($6,500,000) to run the zoo, and
yet, the income from tourism was just 15,000,000 RMB
($2,000,000).”Without a fresh financial support, the 1,000 tigers would
be starving. Then, it would become meaningless to talk about
protections of these animals.”The farm owners display compassion too
for the people who come to their door seeking medical help.”Patients of
rheumatism could be often seen to come to us for tiger bones, but we
could give them nothing even when they get down on their knees pleading
because it is not allowed.”The tiger farmers receive a sympathetic
hearing from some NGOs which believe that conservation strategies work
best when the conservation targets acquire some financial value.”When
trade is outlawed, only outlaws trade,” says Barun Mitra of the Liberty
Institute in Delhi.Mr Mitra’s thesis is that money should be made from
tigers in a number of ways, from ecotourism to trading in tiger
parts.The demand for crocodile skin, he says, used to be met by
poaching. Nowadays, the supply chain starts in crocodile farms, which
provide the same material at a fraction of the cost.As a result,
crocodile numbers in the wild have risen; and he believes exactly the
same thing could happen with tigers.”The tiger could easily earn its
keep and buy its way out of extinction, if we allow it to do so,” Mr
Mitra concludes.

It is an argument swiftly dismissed by Sue Lieberman of WWF International.
“It
costs a lot to keep a tiger in captivity, and next to nothing to kill
them in the wild,” she says.”In any case, legitimate traditional
medicine doesn’t need tiger parts. And those who use tiger bone prefer
bones from wild animals.”

Farming for conservation
China’s
approach is hard to read. Negotiations at this CITES meeting have
resulted in a joint resolution on the issue from China, India, Nepal
and Russia.Much of it is anodyne. The most intriguing clause reads:
“Parties with operations breeding tigers on a commercial scale should
implement measures to restrict the captive population to a level
supportive only to conserving wild tigers.”So by implication, China is
backing tiger farms only for conservation, not for trade. Yet some
delegates say they have been told that the trade will be re-opened.

The Chinese delegation has not so far granted the BBC an interview to clarify the situation.
China
has done a great deal in 14 years, in terms of education, enforcement,
and banning tiger products from traditional medicineSue Lieberman,WWF
International.
At its root may lie a conflict between the desire to
support the international trade ban and the goodwill of the
international conservation community, and the desire to support
businessmen who may carry significant weight in their home
regions.”China has done a great deal in 14 years, in terms of
education, enforcement, and banning tiger products from traditional
medicine,” comments Dr Lieberman.”So why they would want to risk all
that now, just to give a bit of profit to a few rich businessmen, I
don’t know.”Some of those businessmen are apparently making a profit
from tiger parts already.Earlier this year, undercover reporters from
the UK’s Independent Television News (ITN) visited Guilin tiger farm
and found that tiger meat was being sold illegally. The origin of the
meat was validated by an independent laboratory in China.John Sellar,
senior enforcement officer with CITES, told delegates that the US Fish
and Wildlife Service has now endorsed the Chinese laboratory’s
findings. This had been communicated to the Chinese government, he said.

How many tigers?
If
the joint resolution is adopted by CITES, it is clear that difficulties
still lie ahead, not least over that thorny issue of how many captive
tigers would be needed for conservation.”That might depend from region
to region, on the habitat – it might be two in one place and 10 in the
next,” said India’s delegate Rajesh Gopal from the National Tiger
Conservation Authority.”We don’t really need any captive tigers,” he
added.India has chosen a policy of engagement, hoping that by starting
with this degree of co-operation it can slowly persuade China to bring
the tiger farming era to a close.If it does, what to do with the 5,000
tigers already in captivity will be a difficult issue.They lack the
instincts needed to survive in the wild. And coming from a small gene
pool, they have little to offer the existing wild population.But that
will be a single problem requiring a single solution. For Valmik
Thapar, a much larger problem looms if farms are not closed and the
tiger trade banned forever – the final extinction of this magnificent
predator.”History will never forgive one human being or one collective
of human beings if we take any other decision,” he says.

[Author]

June 12, 2007 at 1:56 PM