Panthera tigrisFamily: Felidae
One of the world’s most beloved and iconic species is also one of its most endangered: the tiger. Tigers have been listed in Appendix I* of CITES since 1987. The world’s population of wild tigers, which was approximately 100,000 a century ago, has fallen to an estimated 3,200 or fewer today, and a recent analysis indicates that tigers occupy a mere 7% of their historic range.9 The main factors fueling the decline of tiger populations are loss and fragmentation of habitat, loss of available prey, and poaching of tigers in order to sell their parts for medicine, clothing, and decoration.10
Tiger bone has been used for centuries in TCM to treat conditions associated with bone and muscle pain, such as rheumatism and arthritis, as well as limb spasms, lower back pain, and chills.11 Other parts of the tiger—including blood, tail, and eyes—have also sometimes been used for medicinal purposes.10
China’s wild tiger populations were decimated to support the country’s medicine industry; it is suspected that 50 or fewer tigers currently survive in the wild in China.12 Tiger populations from other range states were also heavily poached to provide for tiger bone markets in China and elsewhere—severely reducing tiger populations in those areas as well.
“Until 1993, there were huge manufacturing industries in both China and South Korea that were making mass market medicines from tiger bone,” said Judy Mills, moderator for the International Tiger Coalition and health security advisor for Conservation International (oral communication, August 18, 2009). According to Mills, these countries imported tiger skeletons and exported pills, wines, and tea balls made from tiger bone to international markets.
Mills explained that in 1993, CITES and the United States threatened trade sanctions against China and South Korea due to those countries’ continued trade in tiger and rhino parts, which finally led the 2 countries to stop the manufacturing of these medicines, put bans into place to prevent sales of products claiming to contain tiger parts or derivatives, and remove tiger bone from their national pharmacopeias.
“This probably saved wild tigers,” said Mills. “We might not have had one left today had it not been for those bans.”
According to Mills, many TCM consumers were initially outraged at the loss of tiger bone medicines, but after a few years, the TCM community had largely accepted the ban. Many had even become actively involved in encouraging substitutions in place of endangered medicinal ingredients. Researchers for TRAFFIC conducted a survey in 2005 and 2006 of retail Chinese medicine shops and pharmacies to evaluate the effectiveness of China’s 1993 ban.12 They found that only 2.5% of 518 shops still claimed to stock tiger bone.
Bones from other animals, such as pigs or dogs, have often been promoted as substitutes to tiger bone.10,13 According to Lixin Huang, president of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM), many herbal ingredients and formulas that are described as having a “warm function to improve circulation” can be used as replacements for tiger bone (oral communication, August 26, 2009).
A survey of 301 practitioners certified in Chinese herbology was conducted in 2002 to obtain information about use of endangered species in TCM and possible replacements for those species, and that survey’s results were profiled in the book Mending the Web of Life.Fifty-three respondents to that survey provided recommendations for replacements for tiger bone, although there was little consensus. The most frequently cited substitution, with 12 citations, was wu jia pi (Acanthopanax gracilistylus, Araliaceae), an herb closely related to eleuthero (Eleutherococcus senticosus, Araliaceae; syn. A. senticosus), formerly sold in the United States as “Siberian ginseng.”
A study commissioned in 2001, meanwhile, by the Department for Environmental Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Charitable Trust, investigated plants with TCM properties and functions similar to tiger bone.11 The study’s authors found that tiger bone may possess some anti-inflammatory properties, and some of the investigated herbs also demonstrated potential anti-inflammatory actions.
That report, released in 2006, ultimately identified 15 herbs as potential alternatives to tiger bone: Saposhnikovia divaricata (Apiaceae) root, Clematis chinensis (Ranunculaceae) root and rhizome, Angelica pubescens (Apiaceae) root, A. sinensis root, Ligusticum chuanxiong (Apiaceae) rhizome, Gentiana macrophylla (Gentianaceae) root, Epimedium sagittatum (Berberidaceae) aerial parts, Atractylodes lancea or
A. chinensis (Asteraceae) rhizome, A. macrocephala rhizome, Cinnamomum cassia (Lauraceae) bark, C. cassia twigs, Morus alba (Moraceae) young branches, Taxillus chinensis (Loranthaceae) stem and bark, Spatholobus suberectus (Fabaceae) root and stem, and Chaenomeles speciosa (Rosaceae) fruit.
The herbal company Mayway (Oakland, CA) is committed to supporting the preservation of endangered species and humane treatment of animals, for which the company discontinued the sale of products with tiger bone and bear bile many years ago. After joining WWF’s Save the Tiger educational campaign in 2001, Mayway compiled a list of several of the company’s botanical products with similar functions as those attributed to tiger bone for WWF’s use in promoting substitutes to practitioners.15 That list included such multiherb products as Great Corydalis Teapills for pain due to acute injury and Yao Tong Pian tablets for strengthening sinews and bones and for pain due to chronic deficiency, obstruction, or acute injury.
But despite great strides in removing tiger bone from markets and identifying substitutes, illegal trafficking and other problems associated with tiger trade persist. In particular, tiger farms—facilities that typically masquerade as tiger conservation sites—threaten to counteract tiger preservation efforts and reinvigorate trade in tiger parts. Tigers are bred, caged, and offered as attractions to visitors at these “farms,” while carcasses of dead tigers are often stored in giant freezers so that they can be sold if trade in tiger parts is reopened.16,17
A report submitted by China to CITES in 2007 noted that the population of farmed tigers throughout the country had reached 5,000 by the end of 2006, with more than 800 new cubs born every year.18 “That means that China could have 6,000 to 7,000 tigers now in captivity,” said Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional director of IFAW (oral communication, August 31, 2009).
The farms are backed by very powerful businessmen and investors who want trade in farmed tiger parts to be legalized. The idea was presented to CITES in 2007, but CITES member nations decided that such trade should not be allowed. They further recommended that the number of tigers in these farms be reduced to levels more appropriate for conservation goals. According to Gabriel, further discussions regarding tiger farms have taken place in the years following that CITES meeting, but China and the few other countries that contain smaller-scale tiger farms have not made any efforts to limit or end tiger farming.
Moreover, some facilities in China have already begun manufacturing and selling tiger bone wine using the bodies of farmed tigers, despite China’s ban and in violation of CITES.17,19 The organization IFAW visited 5 of China’s biggest tiger farms from 2005 to 2007, as well as a wine factory associated with one of the tiger farms.17 According to a report released by IFAW, a manager of the wine factory claimed that hundreds of its wine containers held full tiger skeletons steeped in an alcoholic brew with medicinal herbs, and the investigators were shown a tiger skeleton within one of the wine vats.
In order to circumvent China’s law against tiger trade, wine currently being produced from farmed tiger parts is not clearly labeled as “tiger bone wine.”17,19 It is packaged and sold, however, in ways that convey the endangered ingredient (such as in tiger-shaped bottles or under the name “bone protecting wine,” which denotes the product as tiger bone wine through a play on words†). These wines are promoted as tonics, rather than as medicines, so that they do not require special regulatory permits.
According to Gabriel, wines promoted as tiger bone wine are sold at the tiger farms, in retail stores, in airports, and in other locations, as well as over the Internet. One wine factory manager told IFAW that as many as 100,000 bottles of that factory’s tiger bone wine were sold in 2006 alone.17
Gabriel noted that one of the reasons tiger farms are able to sell these tonics is because they tap into long-held cultural beliefs regarding the medicinal effectiveness of tiger bone.
Mills likewise stated that, “Every Chinese person of every age knows tiger bone is supposed to be good for aches and pains and broken bones, so there is residual demand.”
Such demand is evident from the results of a 2007 survey of 1,880 Chinese adults, in which 43% of respondents claimed to have used some product thought to contain tiger derivatives, and 90% of those consumers claimed to have used them after the 1993 ban was enacted—many claimed within the previous 2 years.20 (In the same survey, however, 93% of respondents agreed that China’s ban of tiger products must be maintained to protect wild tigers.)
If trade in farmed tiger parts is officially legalized in China, poaching of wild tigers is likely to increase. The International Tiger Coalition has pointed out that poaching is less costly than farming tigers, poachers could easily launder illegally obtained tiger parts by claiming that they are from farmed tigers, and demand is unlikely to be satisfied by farmed tigers alone.21 Additionally, Asian consumers typically believe that medicines made from wild animals are more potent, which would further encourage poaching.20,21
Poaching of wild tigers may already be increasing. Gabriel said that she receives information on tiger poaching and confiscations practically every day. “In recent years, seizures of tiger parts from wild tigers have increased in frequency,” she said. “According to the World Customs Organization, actual seizures of contraband only represent 10% of the actual trade.”
In India, the bodies of 88 tigers killed by poachers were found in 2009—double the amount found the previous year.19 Some of India’s tiger reserves now have no tigers, and poaching is considered a likely cause.22
“If trade is reignited among more than a billion people in China, then those who can afford it will go for the wild tiger bone—and wild tigers will go very quickly,” said Mills.
Legalized trade in farmed tiger parts would also likely cause practitioners and consumers to abandon use of tiger bone substitutes. “If the ban were lifted, there wouldn’t be any incentive to look for alternatives,” said Gabriel. “It would undermine conservation efforts for the past 20 years.”
One of the world’s most beloved and iconic species is also one of its most endangered: the tiger. Tigers have been listed in Appendix I* of CITES since 1987. The world’s population of wild tigers, which was approximately 100,000 a century ago, has fallen to an estimated 3,200 or fewer today, and a recent analysis indicates that tigers occupy a mere 7% of their historic range.9 The main factors fueling the decline of tiger populations are loss and fragmentation of habitat, loss of available prey, and poaching of tigers in order to sell their parts for medicine, clothing, and decoration.10
Tiger bone has been used for centuries in TCM to treat conditions associated with bone and muscle pain, such as rheumatism and arthritis, as well as limb spasms, lower back pain, and chills.11 Other parts of the tiger—including blood, tail, and eyes—have also sometimes been used for medicinal purposes.10
China’s wild tiger populations were decimated to support the country’s medicine industry; it is suspected that 50 or fewer tigers currently survive in the wild in China.12 Tiger populations from other range states were also heavily poached to provide for tiger bone markets in China and elsewhere—severely reducing tiger populations in those areas as well.
“Until 1993, there were huge manufacturing industries in both China and South Korea that were making mass market medicines from tiger bone,” said Judy Mills, moderator for the International Tiger Coalition and health security advisor for Conservation International (oral communication, August 18, 2009). According to Mills, these countries imported tiger skeletons and exported pills, wines, and tea balls made from tiger bone to international markets.
Mills explained that in 1993, CITES and the United States threatened trade sanctions against China and South Korea due to those countries’ continued trade in tiger and rhino parts, which finally led the 2 countries to stop the manufacturing of these medicines, put bans into place to prevent sales of products claiming to contain tiger parts or derivatives, and remove tiger bone from their national pharmacopeias.
“This probably saved wild tigers,” said Mills. “We might not have had one left today had it not been for those bans.”
According to Mills, many TCM consumers were initially outraged at the loss of tiger bone medicines, but after a few years, the TCM community had largely accepted the ban. Many had even become actively involved in encouraging substitutions in place of endangered medicinal ingredients. Researchers for TRAFFIC conducted a survey in 2005 and 2006 of retail Chinese medicine shops and pharmacies to evaluate the effectiveness of China’s 1993 ban.12 They found that only 2.5% of 518 shops still claimed to stock tiger bone.
Bones from other animals, such as pigs or dogs, have often been promoted as substitutes to tiger bone.10,13 According to Lixin Huang, president of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM), many herbal ingredients and formulas that are described as having a “warm function to improve circulation” can be used as replacements for tiger bone (oral communication, August 26, 2009).
A survey of 301 practitioners certified in Chinese herbology was conducted in 2002 to obtain information about use of endangered species in TCM and possible replacements for those species, and that survey’s results were profiled in the book Mending the Web of Life.Fifty-three respondents to that survey provided recommendations for replacements for tiger bone, although there was little consensus. The most frequently cited substitution, with 12 citations, was wu jia pi (Acanthopanax gracilistylus, Araliaceae), an herb closely related to eleuthero (Eleutherococcus senticosus, Araliaceae; syn. A. senticosus), formerly sold in the United States as “Siberian ginseng.”
A study commissioned in 2001, meanwhile, by the Department for Environmental Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Charitable Trust, investigated plants with TCM properties and functions similar to tiger bone.11 The study’s authors found that tiger bone may possess some anti-inflammatory properties, and some of the investigated herbs also demonstrated potential anti-inflammatory actions.
That report, released in 2006, ultimately identified 15 herbs as potential alternatives to tiger bone: Saposhnikovia divaricata (Apiaceae) root, Clematis chinensis (Ranunculaceae) root and rhizome, Angelica pubescens (Apiaceae) root, A. sinensis root, Ligusticum chuanxiong (Apiaceae) rhizome, Gentiana macrophylla (Gentianaceae) root, Epimedium sagittatum (Berberidaceae) aerial parts, Atractylodes lancea or
A. chinensis (Asteraceae) rhizome, A. macrocephala rhizome, Cinnamomum cassia (Lauraceae) bark, C. cassia twigs, Morus alba (Moraceae) young branches, Taxillus chinensis (Loranthaceae) stem and bark, Spatholobus suberectus (Fabaceae) root and stem, and Chaenomeles speciosa (Rosaceae) fruit.
The herbal company Mayway (Oakland, CA) is committed to supporting the preservation of endangered species and humane treatment of animals, for which the company discontinued the sale of products with tiger bone and bear bile many years ago. After joining WWF’s Save the Tiger educational campaign in 2001, Mayway compiled a list of several of the company’s botanical products with similar functions as those attributed to tiger bone for WWF’s use in promoting substitutes to practitioners.15 That list included such multiherb products as Great Corydalis Teapills for pain due to acute injury and Yao Tong Pian tablets for strengthening sinews and bones and for pain due to chronic deficiency, obstruction, or acute injury.
But despite great strides in removing tiger bone from markets and identifying substitutes, illegal trafficking and other problems associated with tiger trade persist. In particular, tiger farms—facilities that typically masquerade as tiger conservation sites—threaten to counteract tiger preservation efforts and reinvigorate trade in tiger parts. Tigers are bred, caged, and offered as attractions to visitors at these “farms,” while carcasses of dead tigers are often stored in giant freezers so that they can be sold if trade in tiger parts is reopened.16,17
A report submitted by China to CITES in 2007 noted that the population of farmed tigers throughout the country had reached 5,000 by the end of 2006, with more than 800 new cubs born every year.18 “That means that China could have 6,000 to 7,000 tigers now in captivity,” said Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional director of IFAW (oral communication, August 31, 2009).
The farms are backed by very powerful businessmen and investors who want trade in farmed tiger parts to be legalized. The idea was presented to CITES in 2007, but CITES member nations decided that such trade should not be allowed. They further recommended that the number of tigers in these farms be reduced to levels more appropriate for conservation goals. According to Gabriel, further discussions regarding tiger farms have taken place in the years following that CITES meeting, but China and the few other countries that contain smaller-scale tiger farms have not made any efforts to limit or end tiger farming.
Moreover, some facilities in China have already begun manufacturing and selling tiger bone wine using the bodies of farmed tigers, despite China’s ban and in violation of CITES.17,19 The organization IFAW visited 5 of China’s biggest tiger farms from 2005 to 2007, as well as a wine factory associated with one of the tiger farms.17 According to a report released by IFAW, a manager of the wine factory claimed that hundreds of its wine containers held full tiger skeletons steeped in an alcoholic brew with medicinal herbs, and the investigators were shown a tiger skeleton within one of the wine vats.
In order to circumvent China’s law against tiger trade, wine currently being produced from farmed tiger parts is not clearly labeled as “tiger bone wine.”17,19 It is packaged and sold, however, in ways that convey the endangered ingredient (such as in tiger-shaped bottles or under the name “bone protecting wine,” which denotes the product as tiger bone wine through a play on words†). These wines are promoted as tonics, rather than as medicines, so that they do not require special regulatory permits.
According to Gabriel, wines promoted as tiger bone wine are sold at the tiger farms, in retail stores, in airports, and in other locations, as well as over the Internet. One wine factory manager told IFAW that as many as 100,000 bottles of that factory’s tiger bone wine were sold in 2006 alone.17
Gabriel noted that one of the reasons tiger farms are able to sell these tonics is because they tap into long-held cultural beliefs regarding the medicinal effectiveness of tiger bone.
Mills likewise stated that, “Every Chinese person of every age knows tiger bone is supposed to be good for aches and pains and broken bones, so there is residual demand.”
Such demand is evident from the results of a 2007 survey of 1,880 Chinese adults, in which 43% of respondents claimed to have used some product thought to contain tiger derivatives, and 90% of those consumers claimed to have used them after the 1993 ban was enacted—many claimed within the previous 2 years.20 (In the same survey, however, 93% of respondents agreed that China’s ban of tiger products must be maintained to protect wild tigers.)
If trade in farmed tiger parts is officially legalized in China, poaching of wild tigers is likely to increase. The International Tiger Coalition has pointed out that poaching is less costly than farming tigers, poachers could easily launder illegally obtained tiger parts by claiming that they are from farmed tigers, and demand is unlikely to be satisfied by farmed tigers alone.21 Additionally, Asian consumers typically believe that medicines made from wild animals are more potent, which would further encourage poaching.20,21
Poaching of wild tigers may already be increasing. Gabriel said that she receives information on tiger poaching and confiscations practically every day. “In recent years, seizures of tiger parts from wild tigers have increased in frequency,” she said. “According to the World Customs Organization, actual seizures of contraband only represent 10% of the actual trade.”
In India, the bodies of 88 tigers killed by poachers were found in 2009—double the amount found the previous year.19 Some of India’s tiger reserves now have no tigers, and poaching is considered a likely cause.22
“If trade is reignited among more than a billion people in China, then those who can afford it will go for the wild tiger bone—and wild tigers will go very quickly,” said Mills.
Legalized trade in farmed tiger parts would also likely cause practitioners and consumers to abandon use of tiger bone substitutes. “If the ban were lifted, there wouldn’t be any incentive to look for alternatives,” said Gabriel. “It would undermine conservation efforts for the past 20 years.”
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