[FEL-L] India Considers China Move to Lift Tiger Trade Ban

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India Considers China Move to Lift Tiger Trade Ban 
 
5-29-07
 
    NEW DELHI - India indicated on Monday it could back China's push to lift 
a blanket ban on trading tiger parts if certain conditions were met to protect 
wild tigers and a new study showed their numbers would not be affected.  

China is expected to ask permission to relax the ban at the next meeting of 
the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species at The Hague in 
June. It wants the ban lifted for farmed tigers.  
Numbers of the endangered animal have fallen sharply in recent decades due to 
poaching, fuelled by demand for Tiger skins and parts used in traditional 
Chinese medicines.  
Beijing is seeking support from India, which has the world's largest 
population of wild tigers, to change the rules imposed in 1993 to protect the animals. 
 
Environment Secretary Prodipto Ghosh said the government would commission a 
study to see if lifting the ban would be harmful and added that with safeguards 
there could be support for China's plan.  
"Our position is that this regime should eliminate pressures for sourcing 
tiger body parts from the wild," Ghosh said.  
Ghosh said China must take two steps to ensure the protection of wild tigers, 
and if these were met India might look favourably on the proposal.  
First, he said China must have proper procedures for identifying and 
labelling of parts to guarantee that only farmed tigers are killed.  
And second, the traditional medicine sector must inform consumers that drugs 
made from farmed and wild tigers are identical, dispelling the myth that the 
potency of drugs made from wild tigers is stronger.  
"If they take these two steps, we believe that this will have a positive 
impact on conservation of tigers in the wild," Ghosh said.  
China has about 30 tigers in the wild but has several tiger breeding centres 
or farms which collectively house about 5,000 tigers.  
Conservationists say that if the tiger trade is made legal it would result in 
a massive surge in demand for parts and increased poaching in countries like 
India, which is facing a crisis in trying to save its own tiger populations.  
Early results of a census of tigers in central India showed numbers were 
drastically lower than previously estimated.  
Conservationists say pressure on the Chinese government to lift the ban is 
coming from powerful investors at breeding farms, who stand to make enormous 
profits if the trade becomes legal.  

Story by Nita Bhalla  

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
_http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42196/story.htm_ 
(http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42196/story.htm)  



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