Absolutely fucking appalling.
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Bengal tigers face extinction after China rejects trade curbs
The biggest threat to the 1,300 Bengal tigers left in the wild is a rampant demand from China for tiger skins, penises, teeth, whiskers and bones. Many of the parts are ground up and drunk as a libido-enhancing tonic. Although China has bred around 4,000 tigers in farms across the country, the bodies of wild tigers are more highly prized.
Tiger poaching and the smuggling of skins is now the second most common crime along the Indo-China border after the trade of narcotics. According to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), 66 tigers were lost in 2009, with one third being shot by poachers. Two decades ago, there were as many as 15,000 tigers roaming wild in India.
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Tiger economy
The Times
September 3, 2009
The world’s dwindling tiger colonies are facing yet another threat, this time from China’s plan to sanction the use of lawfully sourced tiger pelts. The fear is that, by loosening its ban on the trading of any tiger parts, China will spur poaching in India, which is home to the largest remaining wild tiger population.
China argues that while it may be host to only 30 or 40 tigers living in the wild, it has 5,000 more that have been reared on farms. Such farms were created as tourist attractions, but few doubt that their owners hope to use the cats to produce health tonics. Tiger bone wine is especially prized as a pick-me-up. Though pricey, it grows ever more affordable the richer the Chinese get.
What worries conservationists is that once any trade in tiger parts gains official blessing, policing the traffic will become difficult. India fears that as demand for tiger products grows, it will find itself becoming an even more attractive target for poachers: breeding tigers in captivity in China looks promising, but it will always cost more than slipping a poacher as little as £5 for a carcass that traffickers then transport to China.
India already detects China’s swelling wealth, and a companion rise in its appetite for traditional medicines, as a factor in the decline of its own tiger numbers. Pressured also by a loss of both habitat and prey, India’s tiger population shrank to just 1,411 in February last year from 3,642 in 2002 and 40,000 or so a century ago. India fears that any further incentive for poaching might drive tigers to extinction in the wild.
However heady their benefits, tiger bone tonics are hardly worth the risk of a beast of such fearful symmetry vanishing for ever from our jungles.
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Fears for Indian tiger after Chinese green light for sale of animal products
The Times
September 3, 2009
Only about 30 to 40 tigers survive in the wild in China. But about 5,000 live in tiger farms, where they are bred at great speed. Ostensibly the farms are tourist attractions but it is widely believed that their owners hope to use the animals to produce expensive tiger tonics. The income from visitors to the farms would be dwarfed by the profits from sales of tiger bone wine.
India boasts the world’s largest population of tigers in the wild. Indian conservationists believe that the rapid decline in tiger numbers in the country is a direct result of China’s economic rise and the related increase in demand for traditional medicines. The Indian tiger population stood at 1,411 in February last year, according to an official count, down from 3,642 in 2002 and an estimated 40,000 a century ago.
Ashok Kumar, of the Wildlife Trust of India, a conservation organisation, said that any relaxation of Chinese rules would have a catastrophic effect on the Indian tiger population.
“In all our communications with the Chinese we have been led to believe that the ban is firmly in place,” he said. “We were not aware of this document, [which] could have a huge effect on wild tigers in India by stimulating demand for medicines in China.”
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