New Delhi: Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) joined an international group comprising twenty-eight tiger conservation organizations exhorting China to maintain its successful ban on tiger trade.

This was in response to a recent petition by tiger farm owners urging the Chinese government to re-open trade in tiger parts.

China used to be the world’s largest consumer market for tiger products till 1993, when the Chinese government banned the domestic trade in tiger parts.

However lifting the ban would reignite the demand for tiger products thereby threatening the existence of wild tigers across Asia, the group said.

According to a study, fewer than 5000 tigers are left in the wild, and less than 50 remain in China.

Tiger parts are used in making traditional Chinese medicine. But key members of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) community and leading TCM practitioners have dismissed the claim that tiger parts are an essential medicine.

Fewer than 3% of TCM shops across China were found in recent market survey to offer tiger bone medicines.

However, popular restaurants in China serve Tiger meat as “meat of the king” and are highly recommended by restaurant staff writes the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) report Made in China.

Besides, one also finds tiger wine selling openly in China.

Tiger farms don’t have conservation value. It costs much more to raise a tiger in captivity than it does to poach a tiger from wild.

4,000 semi-tame tigers in China’s tiger farms lack the killer instinct to survive in the wild. A popular TV channel showed how a tame tiger from the Chinese tiger farm was scared of a pig.

With protection, wild tigers will “breed like cats”. On the other hand Wild tigers need large forest tracts filled with prey, protected from poachers.

If the tiger is not protected now, the day is not far when there will be total loss of tiger population such as in India’s Sariska Tiger Reserve. Tiger farms will bring that day closer says Ashok Kumar, Vice Chairman, WTI.