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It was revealed yesterday by six international conservation groups that a number of Chinese wildlife parks are pressing the government to lift its ban on the trade in products made from tigers.

 

At a joint meeting, the Conservation International, the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the Wildlife Conservation Society, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWFN) and the Save the Tiger Fund urged the government to resist the pressure.

 

The groups' representatives expressed concern that China's significant internal market for tiger bone would continue to threaten the animals.

 

Representatives warned that proposals by wildlife parks to legalize the trade in tiger parts could stimulate an increase in demand and seriously undermine China's decade-long campaign to raise public awareness of the need for conservation.

 

The call was made soon after the government announced its first regulation on the trade of endangered species would take effect from today.

 

"We hope that China, in the spirit of this new regulation and the upcoming 2008 Green Olympics, will reiterate its commitment to the 1993 ban on the trade of all tiger derivatives from all sources and thereby continue to play a responsible leadership role in protecting the world's few remaining wild tigers," said Grace Ge, Asia director of the IFAW.

 

In China tiger bones are commonly believed to be a suitable treatment for illnesses such as rheumatism.

 

The WWFN estimates the number of tigers in the wild may have dropped well below 5,000 due to habitat loss, shrinking availability of food sources and poaching. Most of China's remaining tigers are found in the northeast near the Russian border.

 

"In China it's estimated that fewer than 20 wild tigers remain in the northeast and about 30 roam in the southwest along the borders with Myanmar and Laos," said Xie Yan, a professor with the China Academy of Sciences. Poaching would quickly drive the species to extinction.

 

The country's wildlife faced unprecedented threats from fast economic and social development, said Fan Xiaojian, deputy minister of agriculture.

 

China's new "Regulations on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora" cover wildlife listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. China signed up to the international agreement in 1981. The Convention prohibited international trade in tigers in 1987. In 1993 China banned all such trade.   

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 1, 2006)