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.
Russia said Wednesday it had banned the hunting of baby seals, weeks after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called it a "bloody industry."
"The bloody sight of the hunting of seals, the slaughter of these defenseless animals which you cannot even call a real hunt, is banned in our country, just as well as in most developed countries, and is a serious step to protect the biodiversity of the Russian Federation," the minister for natural resources, Yuri Trutnev, said in a statement.
Seals inhabit Russia's White Sea region in the Arctic. As in Canada and Norway, hunters target the fluffy baby seals -- also known as "whitecoats" for their highly valued snow-white fur -- in early spring and club thousands to death.
Putin has a reputation as an animal lover, and says killing seals, "should have been banned a long time ago."
Calling the annual "harvesting" of baby seals a "hunt" is grotesque distortion. It's anything but a "hunt." It's slaughter, and has little economic value.
There are an estimated 200,000 harp seals in Russia's White Sea sealing grounds -- down by 90% from when they were first counted 80 years ago. Some 35,000 baby seals are killed each year when they are about six weeks old and their coats a dazzling white.
The ban was imposed by the Russian Federal Fisheries Agency. The documentation has been sent for state registration with the Ministry of Justice.
"We are delighted at the adoption of this decision and would like to separately underline the important role played by the Russian Natural Resources Ministry in this cause. Thanks to their efforts this has finally taken place. Being a state structure, it greatly influenced the advancement of this process," International Fund for Animal Welfare's Anna Filippova said.
