Taking a strong stand against China’s captive tiger farming, India on Thursday succeeded in introducing a document to internationally report progress on restricting tiger farms at the 57th Standing Committee Meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Geneva. Currently, there are 5,000 captive tigers in these Chinese farms, which are supposedly meant to serve as tourist attractions. However, even though China set a domestic ban on trade in tiger parts in 1993, it has the world’s largest illegal market for them. There is evidence to show that the animals are bred to feed the demand for tiger parts in medicinal and other preparations. Last year, it was decided at CITES that tiger farms should be ‘restricted’ only to levels supporting the conservation of the tiger in the wild. Now, India has taken this idea a step forward, urging for benchmarks to review progress on this front, going as far as to say that tiger farms should be phased out completely. The proposal was accepted by the CITES Secretariat and a working group has been set up to consider how this can be accomplished. Much to China’s chagrin, India has suggested that the phasing-out process should include establishment of individual animal registration, development of a time-bound strategic plan to stop commercial breeding and disposal of stockpiles of tiger parts. It has also recommended that China provide confirmation that no new permits for breeding are being sent out and release information on what will happen to captive tigers. In response, China contended that breeding captive tigers was its cultural and sovereign right, with the tiger farm lobby and NGOs like the International Wildlife Management Consortium maintaining that harvesting the body parts of captive tigers commercially can help fund conservation efforts in the wild. Kartick Satyanarayan, Member, Advisory Board, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, affirmed that tiger farming sounds the “death knell” of the Indian tiger. “There is no way of knowing whether tiger bones or parts are from the wild or from a farm. It takes more than Rs 3 lakh to farm a tiger, but for a poacher it only takes effort,” he said.Meanwhile, there is evidence confirming that tiger farms are centres of illegal activities. “We have found the recent availability of tiger bone wine at two wild animal parks near Beijing and ongoing illegal sale of Asian Big Cat skins in Linxia, in the Province of Gansu. This shows the lack of enforcement in China and the threat to wild tigers,” said Debbie Banks, Senior Campaigner, Environmental Investigative (EIA) Agency, speaking from Geneva to The Indian Express.
