TIGER by the TAIL

By some accounts, the market in tiger-driven medicine brought in more than 12 million a year before China banned the sale of tiger parts in 1993, helping to stabilise wild-tiger populations that were perilously close to extinction. Now some Chinese officials want to lift the injunction to regain that lost market. That8217;s alarmed conservationists, who fear scrapping the ban could undo the progress of the last 14 years. Eric Dinerstein, chief scientist, World Wildlife Fund, says flatly: 8220;Lifting the ban on the tiger trade would spell the end for a number of wild-tiger populations across Asia.8221;

On its surface, the idea of creating a regulated market for tiger parts has a certain appeal. Chinese officials and others note that demand for such parts persists regardless of the ban. 8220;It will be a waste if the resources of dead tigers aren8217;t used for traditional medicine,8221; said wildlife-conservation official Wang Wei. Legalising the trade, they argue, could actually help protect wild tigers by reducing the incentive for illegal poaching. Free-market proponents point to the case of wild crocodiles. For the past few decades, many countries have allowed a regulated trade in captive-bred crocodile skins and other parts from farms or ranches. Even many conservationists agree this has helped save some wild-crocodile populations from poachers.

But, they say, comparisons between crocs and tigers don8217;t hold, in part because tigers are far more expensive to raise than crocodiles, upping the incentive to poach instead of farm. 8220;In India you can poison a tiger for less than a dollar,8221; says Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. 8220;Raising one in captivity will cost 3,500-10,000.8221;

What8217;s more, say conservationists, tiger parts from places like India8212;which has the world8217;s largest wild-tiger population8212;could be trafficked to China. There buyers would have no way to distinguish illegal parts from legal ones, which means poached tigers and parts could be 8220;laundered8221; as farmed ones.

Some inside and outside China raise another question: should the Chinese government be giving official sanction to a trade that skeptics say is based on pseudoscience? 8220;Tiger parts have no proven effect as drugs or medicine8212; they8217;re useless,8221; says Zu Shuxian, a retired professor of epidemiology at Anhui Medical University and an outspoken critic of traditional Chinese medicine. Zu and others argue that lifting the ban could jeopardise wild tigers in order to supply a market that8217;s fundamentally fraudulent.

Others say the Chinese should note Russia8217;s strategy in preserving its wild Siberian, or Amur, tigers. Only a few dozen strong 50 years ago, the population is now some 500 in the wild, thanks to huge nature reserves that were created for the tigers, a well-enforced hunting ban and 8220;buffer areas8221; to separate tiger and human populations. Conserving wild tigers 8220;is really about proper landscape-use management and getting people to change their behavior,8221; says Xie Yan, the Beijing-based director of the Wildlife Conservation Society8217;s China programme.

Conservationists are appealing to the Chinese government to keep the ban in place. The fate of Tiger No. 38212;and his wild cousins8212;will hang on Beijing8217;s decision.

-JONATHAN ADAMS Newsweek