UPDATE: Just two weeks after easing a ban on trading in tiger and rhinoceros products, China is putting on the brakes. (See China Reverses Tiger, Rhino Ban.) The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Chinese Cabinet official Ding Xuedong. Xuedong said on Monday that the change had been “postponed after study.” Lifting the ban had brought much criticism as conservationists around the globe feared China was giving legal cover to poaching and smuggling of endangered wildlife.
Ding continued to say that the Chinese government would not permit illegal trade in the animals or their byproducts. “Illegal acts will be dealt with severely,” he says.
The report says that the ban on the import and export of rhino and tiger parts as well as their use in traditional Chinese medicine would be maintained. Ding did not clarify whether the postponement was permanent or if the decision might be revisited at some point in the future.
Even with the ban, traditional medicinal uses of tiger bone and rhino horn have continued in China. The lack of proof of their effectiveness has not stopped the practice—nor has decreasing wild populations of the endangered animals. China has long tolerated farming of tigers and has allowed a semi-legal sale of farmed tiger bones and other body parts.
The statement from authorities late last month said they would begin to allow tiger and rhino product trading “under special circumstances.” Conservation groups speculated that China might even begin to farm non-native rhinos as they do with tigers. That concern was in addition to suggestions that poachers would find it easier to hide the sale of their illegally harvested wild animal products behind the legal trade.
Reacting to the latest announcement, the Humane Society International and the Humane Society of the United States called for China to completely ban the trade in all tiger and rhino products.
(An endangered Siberian tiger runs away with a chicken tossed by tourists at the Harbin Tiger Park in northeastern China. China announced it is suspending rule changes that would have allowed trading in tiger and rhinoceros parts. AP Photo)
