Under the control of the Chinese government, there are approximately 30 tigers left in the wild in China.
According to tradition, all tigers bear the Chinese character for 'king' in the stripes on their brow. This looks like an "H" turned on its side with an
extra line through the middle and the Chinese have imbued the tiger with all sorts of fantastical magical powers, particularly in the realm of Traditional
Chinese Medicine (TCM). Tiger parts are said to cure everything from toothaches to hemorrhoids. Many traditional martial arts iniments, such as 'Dit Da Jow'
used tiger bone in their original recipes. While some short-sighted people rigidly adhere to such "traditional" recipes, modern healers agree that this is
preposterous.
Located on the northern side of the Songhua river at Harbin, is the Dong Bei Hu Lin Yuan 东北虎林园 - the 'Northeast Tiger Forest Park.' The park covers 1.5
million sqm and is open for tourists daily. Sadly, the the park has long suffered financial problems because of the high daily expenses to maintaining each
tiger. The park staff care for approximately 700 tigers but with only some 100 on view to the public, including eight white tigers and one albino tiger.
Visitors to the park are encouraged to buy live rabbits, goats, pigs, chickens and even oxen to feed the hungry tigers. Much to the distaste of many
visitors, one is also encouraged to watch the terrified 'meals' being stalked and run down, and the tigers fighting as they devour the live food. Visitors
descriptions of this practice included screaming horror and vomiting or the naturalists attitude of seeing captive but wild tigers, spontaneously stalking
and killing their prey in a typical setting. According to the Xinhuan News Agency the Tiger Park has recently asked for the legalization the trade of tiger parts. Liu Dan, a park employee,
has been raising tigers for more than 20 years, but his dream is to persuade the Chinese government to lift its ban on the trade of tiger parts. Calls from
within China to remove the ban have grown louder, causing many international groups to voice their concerns that legalizing the trade of tiger bone for
medicinal purposes would stimulate demand for tiger products and increase illegal poaching of wild tigers. For Liu, chief engineer of the Harbin
district/Hengdaohezi Feline Breeding Center in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, the world's largest Siberian tiger breeding base, remains unfazed.
For Liu, a tiger park without the opportunity to sell tiger parts, is simply not financially viable.
"We cannot afford to raise the tigers and we are very short of money now," said Liu.
The Harbin tiger park's tiger population has grown from eight, when the park opened in 1986, to around 700. It is set to be home to 1,000 tigers by 2010
and wildlife watchers, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) believe the park is little more than a tiger-mill.
"An adult tiger eats about five to ten kilos of meat a day, plus medicines and other nutrients: it costs an average of 100 yuan (about US$13) for each
tiger every day," Liu said. "Although the government gives tax breaks, allowances and expenses to train the tigers to live in the wild, the center's major
revenue comes from ticket sales, which average about 10 million yuan a year and is only enough to pay for a year's food supply for 300 tigers. "We have to
exercise birth control, replace beef with cheaper chicken and cut meals for the animals," Liu said. "We can not pay our staff their salaries in time and the
center is already in millions of debt. We can tell our staff their pay is to be delayed, but we can not tell the tigers that they will have no food. Liu
added that the center is keeping more than 100 dead tiger bodies in giant freezers, which cost more than two million yuan every year to operate, in the hope
the government will rescind the ban. Liu has complained of the problems of overpopulation in the park for the last couple of years, but in 2002, park chiefs
actually set a target of having 1,000 tigers by 2010. It seems the park has always been gambling on the government doing away with the ban and calls into
question their efforts to reintroduce tigers into the wild.
In 1986, when the base was established with central government funding, trade of tiger parts was still legal and the park made money from selling parts of
dead tigers. But in 1993, the ban was imposed after fierce lobbying from conservationists as it became clear the population of tigers in the wild was
dwindling alarmingly. The Chinese government also deleted tiger bone from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) dictionaries. Conservationists are campaigning
against the lifting of the ban, denouncing it as "a bad business decision" which will result in more illegal poaching and the virtual distinction of the
species.
"It costs thousands of dollars to raise a tiger on a farm, but as little as one bullet to poach one, and wild tigers are regarded as more potent sources
of medicine," said Ge Rui, chief representative of the Asian Office of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Statistics show that only 2,500
breeding adult tigers survive in the wild, 80 percent of them in India and only 50 in China, and they are under severe threat from loss of habitat, a decline
in the population of their prey and poaching. "A relaxation in Chinese rules would drive tigers to extinction," she said.
Liu however, is desperate. He says he has tried other ways to raise funds such as loaning tigers to other parks. But he said, they escaped and attacked
people. He argues that the lifting of the ban would not have such a negative impact if other measures were also taken. “Lifting the ban provides a good
outlet for the dead tiger bodies and generates more revenues for the parks, which will lead to better protection of the animals," Liu said. "We have done a
lot of work to reintroduce the tigers to the wild. By cutting in-breeding and improving techniques, we have improved the ability and chances of survival for
some tigers and we firmly believe that one day it will succeed," he said. "Thus the ban could be lifted with restrictions and precautions. For example, the
tiger parts will only be sold to medicine companies that are registered and closely monitored. Meanwhile, if the government increases supervision and law
enforcement on illegal poaching, lifting the ban won't affect tigers in the wild." However, the statistics speak for themselves. The population of tigers in the wild was in free-fall up until the Chinese government implemented the ban on
tiger trade in 1993. And still no captive-bred tiger has ever been successfully released into the wild, as Ge Rui points out. "Captive-bred tigers
have never been successfully released into the wild due to gene inefficiencies," she said. "The lifting of the ban will also soil the reputation of the TCM
industry."
Zhang Wei, a professor at the Northeast Forestry University, disagrees on this point. "Using the resource is not to destroy the tigers. Leaving them
unused is no protection at all," he said. "The ban on tiger parts has wiped out production of all tiger-bone-based TCM in China, and hundreds of thousand-
year-old TCM prescriptions have become waste papers." Chinese tradition has it that every bit of a tiger has some medicinal use: tiger bones for treating
rheumatism, tiger urine for treating eye infections. Zhang said lifting the ban would give patients legal ways to obtain effective traditional Chinese
medicine and more choices in treatments. The government remains tight-lipped in the controversy, but sooner or later it is going to have to make a choice.
China is home to 5,000 captive-bred tigers. The government will need to take responsibility for them if the tiger parks like Harbin's go bankrupt. Either
that or they can choose to take the easy way out and legalize the trade of tiger parts, critics said. Ge Rui believes the government should make the ban
permanent, halt the breeding of captive tigers and start phasing out the farms.
Tao Jin, an official with the Heilongjiang forestry department, said "We (the local tiger protection authority) have not received any word of lifting the
ban from the central government so far, and the ban has not changed."
Before the Chinese government utters any response, it seems the debate will continue to rage for a good while yet.
Citations:
BBC World News.
World Wildlife Fund.
Xinhuan News Agency.
The Dong Bei Hu Lin Yuan.
International Fund for Animal Welfare.
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