By Xinhua
Beijing : International conservation groups are renewing calls to the Chinese government to maintain a 15-year moratorium on the trade in tiger parts with a poll showing 95 percent of Chinese support the ban.
The Save the Tiger Fund, which commissioned the poll, said 1,880 respondents in seven major cities were asked about their use of tiger products and related issues.
The results showed almost 95 percent of respondents supported the ban and said they would take action to save wild tigers, including abstaining from the using tiger products.
“The results present the strikingly clear message that most Chinese people care so much about wild tigers that they are willing to change behaviours that threaten survival of tigers in the wild,” said Judy Mills, of the fund.
The poll also showed almost 50 percent of people had consumed what they thought were tiger products and 74 percent of users favoured ingredients from wild over farmed tigers.
“The preference for products from wild tigers confirms our fears that lifting the ban will send the message to poachers that it’s open season on tigers,” said Grace Gabriel, from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
The IFAW and other tiger protection groups are supporting a new website – www.ilaohu.org – that aims to influence government decisions on the ban.
Ilaohu translates as “love tigers” and the website, presents itself as a “platform of communication for all tiger-loving people”. It offers quizzes, picture downloads, and even anecdotes of Chinese pop singers calling themselves the “old tiger band”.
The new international efforts came after several of horrific tiger deaths, resulting from under-funding of private parks.
The shortage of funds has been held up as one of the main arguments by tiger farms and parks for ending the ban.
China has about 5,000 captive-bred tigers, and 1,000 tigers are being bred each year.
China joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1981, and imposed a ban on the harvesting of tiger bones in 1993, starting a long-running debate between pro-traders and conservationists.
Sources in the Chinese forestry ministry said that the ban would not be lifted in the near future.