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| D. Chapagain/Wildlife Conservation Nepal |
| Results of a seizure. |
The majority of people in China want to take action to protect tigers, offering renewed hope of saving the animals from extinction.
A survey of 1,800 people in China, commissioned by the Save the Tiger Fund, found that 95 percent said that they would take action to save wild tigers, including abstaining from the use of tiger products. The same percentage of the public supported China’s domestic ban on tiger trade, with 77 percent saying that they felt that keeping the ban was important for China’s image.
The survey results, released on January 26, 2008, were hailed by conservationists in China and elsewhere as a clear demonstration of the support of the Chinese public for tiger conservation as well as their support for China’s domestic law banning tiger trade. The Chinese government, meanwhile, is under pressure from owners of tiger farms that breed tigers to remove the domestic trade ban so that they can sell tiger parts in trade.
More troublingly, the survey also revealed that use of tiger products remains common in China: nearly 50 percent said that they had consumed what they thought were tiger products and most people did so after the 1993 domestic tiger trade ban went into effect. In addition, nearly 66 percent who said they used medicines containing tiger said that they preferred products from wild tigers rather than from captive-bred tigers.
These results clearly indicate that if China were to remove its domestic trade ban, wild tigers would be poached to fill demand. The results also indicate that, while progress is possible, more work will be needed to get the Chinese public to put their words into action and abstain from using tiger parts.
