So this morning I had an e-mail from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and it was about needing to stop tiger farming.
I didn't even know there was such a thing as tiger farming. I'm so naive sometimes, all I can do is shake my head and read on.
Wild tiger numbers have dwindled in recent years to perilously low numbers - there are now less than 4,000 remaining.
Already under threat from habitat and prey loss, wild tigers now face a serious threat to their existence from tiger farming.
In the late 1990's, wealthy businessmen began farming tigers and making tiger bone available for trade. Tiger farming stimulates the market demand for tiger parts. However, not every tiger trader has a farm - many of them illegally hunt wild tigers, and then sell their parts on a thriving black market.
Tiger farms will NOT save the species. Wildlife farms make the problem worse, according to a recent joint study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Vietnam's Forest Protection Department. The study found that commercial wildlife farms actually deplete wild populations and contribute to illegal wildlife trade.
The logic behind such a move is that since tigers breed well in captivity, farming them is an economical solution to satisfying demand whilst alleviating pressure on the wild tiger.
The market the tiger farmers want to exploit is not the traditional medicine market, rather it is the luxury high-end market for tiger bone wine. There is already an issue involving illegally selling tiger bone wine based on some sort of breach in the 1993 Chinese ban to do so.
Just last weekend, a group of thieves killed an endangered tiger in an Indonesian zoo and stole most of its body, zoo officials said, a theft police suspect was motivated by the animal's valuable fur and bones. All the thieves left in the caged area were the animals intestines. This is what is done to tigers when they are easily accessible.
"The very existence of these farms, and the persistent lobbying of the business community is a distraction that deflates and undermines real tiger conservation efforts. We're being asked to believe that those who have already dabbled in illegal trade have a real interest in limiting their market and that the enforcement authorities, which have failed to stop them so far, will be able to regulate a legal trade to prevent the laundering of poached tiger parts." [The Ecologist, July 30, 2009]
In addition, you're demanding far too much from the mama tiger when you keep her confined purely to breed. A successful tigress in the wild may raise a litter of up to four cubs to adulthood every two and half to three years. At a tiger farm in Thailand, a tigress can have at least one litter a year.
With all you have read thus far, don't you agree that farming tigers has far greater risks than not?
The United States, historically a leader on global tiger conservation, has proposed a new international effort to end tiger farming that it hopes to present at the next CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) conference.
