Creating tiger farms will only help criminals

``Creating tiger farms will only help criminals''

Staff Reporter

``Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners have stopped using tiger parts for making medicines''

CHENNAI : Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners have stopped using tiger parts for making medicines more than a decade ago, said Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia Regional Director, International Fund for Animal Welfare, here on Thursday.

Ms. Gabriel, who is from China, made a presentation about tiger trade and TCM at the `Asia for Animals' conference. She said the TCM practitioners used tiger parts only for curing rheumatism. But, later, people began claiming that tiger parts enhanced virility.

A few countries wanted the ban on tigers lifted as it had not yielded any result and they insisted that a new approach be adopted. Refuting this idea, Ms. Gabriel felt the current international and domestic bans on trade in tiger products had helped Russia's tiger population to recover and other wild tiger populations to persist.

In her opinion, without these bans, wild tigers would be even worse than they are today. Experience had shown that bans on trade in other highly endangered species have been very effective when they were adequately supported and enforced, she said.

Another view of a section of people was that the traditional tiger conservation methods have not worked, as evidenced by the continuing decline of wild tiger population. Ms. Gabriel pointed out that a few tiger range countries had invested the full political will and financial support necessary for traditional tiger conservation methods to work. Wild tigers would survive and thrive if they were well protected in situ.

Traditional conservation methods were far less expensive per tiger protected than any ex-situ scenario and also protected entire species complexes and eco-systems, she said.