The main cause of the tiger’s demise continues to be China’s use of tiger bone medicines. Not surprisingly China’s tigers went from being the most plentiful to the most scarce within a short amount of time. On top of that there are burgeoning human populations, habitat loss and fragmentation, and depletion of wild prey. Demand for tigers soon hopelessly outstripped supply, and other big cats, including snow leopards, became caught up in this maelstrom of want versus reason.

Dried, fried and powdered bone is the most common form of tiger medicine. It is used to treat a catalogue of complaints from bone injuries, arthritis, skin disease, convulsions, and malaria to laziness, ‘eruption under the toenail’ and demonic possession. Apart from this traditional application, there has been a flurry of new remedies, such as plasters, gels and wine; the latter being the most expensive. By the early 1990s the industry was worth some US$12.4 million a year, with over 200 companies manufacturing tiger bone remedies. The Chinese government itself is sitting on a stockpile of 625.429 kg of tiger bone.

China’s hunger for tiger parts continues to propel the species towards extinction. Hunting tigers became illegal in 1979. Tiger bone was also removed from the list of government-approved Chinese medicines. In the most laudable move yet, China banned the sale of tiger products in 1993, curbing production and demand. But all this is about to change. Businesses who profit from large scale tiger farms are pressuring the Chinese government to legalize the sale of tiger products from captive bred animals. If this goes ahead, the consequences for wild tigers across Asia will be catastrophic.

China has encouraged commercial breeding of wildlife to supply ingredients for traditional medicine since 1988. Bear farming for bile extraction is a well known example. Tiger farming another. The 1993 ban dealt a substantial blow to tiger breeders. And now they hitting back to recoup their losses - at the world’s last surviving tigers. Despite a ban on the sale of their products, tiger farms have proliferated, breeding tigers on a massive scale. A staggering 4,000 tigers languish on more than 200 Chinese farms. About 3,000 are kept by 10–20 facilities, with just two holding more than 1,000 tigers each.

Freezers at these facilities are piled high with tiger carcasses, and both have received substantial funding from the Chinese state. One facility alone collected $930,000. Now both outfits complain that they can no longer afford their massive tiger populations. At up to US$22.32 per gram and 1.3 billion potential customers, there is a lot of money to be made here. But tiger farming would make it impossible to enforce China’s ban on trade in wild tigers, because parts and products from farmed and wild tigers are indistinguishable. The message this would send to potential consumers of tiger parts will finish off the world’s tigers. Farms also can easily launder Illegal tiger parts. They are already selling tiger wine illegally – a fact which is emphatically denied. This in turn is already fuelling demand and poaching. Killing just one animal will keep poachers going for a year.

What is proposed is nothing short of the economic sell out of tigers so that a small number of wealthy tiger breeders can further enrich themselves. The only thing that will save the tiger is uncompromising habitat protection, zero-tolerance enforcement, and a willingness to give up using tiger products amongst consumers. The latter can only be achieved through public education, such as CWI’s work with Himalayan communities. The Tibetan’s openness and the Dalai Lama’s clear conservation message has already cut demand for tiger and other animal products like no other initiative in the past. Public education has been effective and should be the main focus. At the same time, tiger breeding must be stopped and all stocks of tiger parts and carcasses must be destroyed.

CWI joined forces with 30 international conservation organisations with a stake in tiger conservation to convince the Chinese government to abandon its plans on tiger farming and undertake convincing steps to .help save the world’s tigers. The obvious solution, namely that instead of controlling the world, we try to control ourselves for a change is less popular on the grounds that it would require some active participation from us that goes beyond passing the buck. Unless there a fundamental change in the way we interact with the natural world, tigers will fade away before our very eyes, like Lewis Carroll’s fictional Cheshire cat – but we doubt they will be smiling.