Community
A new and significant threat to tigers in the wild comes from large scale tiger farms in China. Tigers are being speed-bred at these farms to supply tiger bone and other body parts for commercial trade in the hope that China will one day allow the sale of their byproducts to be legal.
Fewer than 5000 tigers remain in the wild. They roam mainly in India and the Far East of Russia in a natural habitat reduced by 40% in the last decade. In the last 50 years alone, three sub-species of tigers have gone extinct in Asia.
Tigers have long been a revered icon in Oriental culture, and tiger bone has historically been used to treat rheumatism in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). But the globalization of traditional medicine is exerting unsustainable pressure on vulnerable tiger species. Recognizing this, TCM communities inside and outside of China have embraced the concept of harmony with nature and are now promoting a medicine practice that does not threaten the survival of endangered species, including the tiger.
Tigers are protected by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) which prohibits international trade in tiger parts and derivatives for commercial purposes. China joined CITES in 1981 and banned the domestic trade in tiger parts in 1993. Since then, the Chinese government has invested significant efforts in reducing market demand in tiger products: by eliminating tiger bone from the official pharmacopeias, raising consumer awareness and identifying cheaper and more effective herbal alternatives to tiger bone for use in TCM.
Yet in spite of official efforts to conserve tigers, tiger farmers are attempting to disguise these tiger farming ventures as “conservation” initiatives and “as benefiting human health”, while shamelessly breeding tigers excessively, stockpiling tiger carcasses, stoking demand and making and selling wine made from tiger bone. More than 4,000 captive-bred, semi-tame tigers live on these farms today, and the investors in these tiger businesses are now pressuring the Chinese government to allow them to sell tiger products.
The truth is that these farmed tigers have no value for the conservation of wild tigers. The tigers are artificially selected to produce the maximum numbers of litters and paired continuously for breeding. Farmed tigers are therefore inbred, and worse, lack the very traits that allow tigers to survive in the wild. On tiger farms cubs are taken away from their mother as early as three months old so that the mother will be ready to breed again. In contrast, a wild tiger cub will stay with its mother for up to three years learning the basic skills for survival in the wild.
The wild tiger population simply cannot sustain the level of increased pressure that reopening the trade in farmed tiger parts would create. Allowing the trade of farmed tiger parts would provide incentives to criminals to “launder” parts from tigers poached in the wild. And shooting a tiger in the wild costs little more than the cost of a bullet, while raising a farmed tiger to maturity costs 250 times more. The financial incentive to poach, driven by demand for “authentic” wild tiger parts, would most certainly mean the end of wild tigers.
