A year to save the tiger

When mainland officials locked up huge warehouses stocked with millions of traditional medicines containing tiger and rhino parts in 1993, Judy Mills thought they would never see the light of day again. How wrong the director of the wildlife trade monitor, TRAFFIC East Asia, turned out to be. Five years later, there is evidence of these medicines around the globe, despite an international trade ban and prohibition in China against the manufacture of tiger and rhino preparations. Revered and feared throughout Asia for its power, stealth and beauty, the tiger is also coveted for its parts, from brain to bone, whose medicinal use dates back perhaps 1,000 years. Today the bone of the tiger is most sought after - particularly the upper front leg - which, ground into powder for pills and soaked to make wine, is used to treat rheumatism and arthritis. Investigations have revealed the availability of medicinal products containing tiger parts - and the derivatives of other endangered species - in Europe, Australasia, North America and Asia. The most recent TRAFFIC report documented such products in 50 per cent of 110 Chinese medicine stores in the United States and Canada. But how long can wild tigers sustain demand not only in Asia but from wealthy Chinese communities in the West? In the year of the tiger the statistics are chilling. At the turn of the century there were more than 100,000 tigers left in the wild. Today there may be as few as 5,000. In the past 60 years the Bali, Javan and Caspian tigers have disappeared. Five other sub-species, the Bengal, Siberian, Sumatran, Indo-Chinese and South China tigers remain. The threat of extinction, however, looms over the latter sub-species, whose last 30 representatives survive in the fragments of forest remaining in southern China. Habitat loss and poaching for traditional medicines are to blame, causing the separation of the tiger populations into more than 160 sub-populations, which in turn enhances the risks associated with human encroachment. By the early 1990s, warning bells were ringing, after Project Tiger in India, the first such international conservation initiative, had been proclaimed a success. When China wiped out most of its own tigers, wildlife smugglers moved further afield: a 1992 census in Indian reserves revealed extensive poaching and smuggling, puncturing Project Tiger's replenished population figures. In the Russian Far East, whose China border opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, numbers of Siberian tigers plummeted so sharply that armed anti-poaching brigades were formed. International trade in all tiger sub-species has been banned since 1987 and in 1993 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora urged signatories to take urgent measures to halt continuing illegal trade. But the black market flourished. In Taiwan it was so blatant and well-exposed by environmental groups that the United States applied trade sanctions. As the failure of institutional and legal attempts to stifle supply became apparent, conservationists turned to tackling demand and what was perceived to be the tigers' greatest enemy: traditional Chinese medicine. Undercover footage of smuggling rackets and cold-blooded poaching spoke for itself. Hard-hitting conservation campaigns raised concern and funds in the West. Less gruesome adverts employing clever word plays - devised by leading advertising agencies - reaped industry acclaim, awards and even notoriety. The plug was pulled on one series run in Hong Kong by the British based Tiger Trust, featuring three infamous characters including O J Simpson - by implication, medicine practitioners and traders who plied their dubious potions were tarred with O J's brush. His lawyers threatened legal action for insinuating he was a murderer. A series devised by Ogilvy and Mather for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society [WCS], targeted the use of tiger penis as an aphrodisiac: 'Help us destroy the myth not the tiger.' 'Eating the parts of a tiger is said to give you its legendary sexual prowess. You too can make love for a full fifteen seconds,' said one ad in an attempt to dissuade consumers. It won a gold medal in American advertising industry awards but what impact did such campaigns have on the consumers, traders and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine? Ms Mills cringes at WCS's tiger-penis series, which she says not only confused popular folklore with respectable traditional medicine, but was 'flat out embarrassing' to Chinese sentiment. Indeed, at the height of international machinations and campaigns by non-governmental organisations, the traditional-medicine community remained unaware of the bolt that was about to strike, says Samuel Lee of TRAFFIC East Asia. 'At the grassroots level, TCM [traditional Chinese medicine] traders and practitioners saw their fellow TCM specialists prosecuted for selling what had for centuries been a respected medicine. The TCM community felt bewildered and under siege,' he said. Ms Mills does not doubt the sincerity of conservationists dedicated to saving the tiger. But she says they did more harm than good. 'What was missing was a fundamental respect for Chinese culture and Chinese medicine,' she said. 'Conservation was lost in the whole argument.' 'It sets us behind for a while - the wildlife was lost in the equation - and it became an issue of East versus West. 'People were talking about an issue of medicinal imperialism, and we wasted some of the tigers' precious time on nationalism, racism and stalemate. 'I see all the years it took to repair the damage. There was a lot of damage - it took a long, long time to get past the resentments, the cynicism and the mistrust to where we are today.' Hong Kong Society of Practitioners of Chinese Herbal Medicine Professor Chan Kong-sang agrees. 'In the past Chinese medicine doctors felt that conservationists and environmentalists were the enemy and they were trying to kill off our profession, therefore we felt very significant antagonism towards them,' he said at a conference on substitutes for endangered species last December. That symposium, attended by the traditional medicine community and conservationists, heralded a new approach to tackling demand for tiger products. The WCS, whose Asia Conservation Communication Programme is based in Shanghai, launched a tiger exhibition in the city's zoo earlier this year. The year of the tiger will also usher in 'culturally sensitive' advertising campaigns in Asia and North America, targeting consumers of traditional medicine, in a bid to enlist their support. Ogilvy and Mather Advertising have devised a subtle series of Lunar New Year advertisements for the World Wide Fund for Nature [WWF] Hong Kong, using traditional banners. In place of the character for tiger is information about the animal's plight. Another advert depicts a child wearing a tiger hat - traditionally used in China to enlist feline protection - saying, 'They protect your children; who will protect them?' Ogilvy and Mather account director, Nick Slade says aggressive campaigns are a thing of the past. 'Things have moved on from shock tactics and gruesome images. We wanted to do something culturally sensitive,' he said. Even Peter Knights, formerly of the no-nonsense Environmental Investigation Agency [EIA] that has exposed illegal wildlife trade around the world, believes it is time to change tactics in order to tap latent support of many Asians for the protection of endangered species. Frontman for the Global Survival Network, Mr Knights was in Hong Kong to launch the Asian Conservation Awareness Programme, a campaign backed by movie star Jackie Chan that will run throughout Asia. The video and ad initiative, 'When the buying stops, the killing can too,' does not shy away from gruesome footage of poaching, scorching black humour and an eerie machine for grinding tigers in a bid to get its message across. The consumer-orientated approach is a natural progression from the aggressive campaigns begun in the early 1990s after the scale of trade in tiger and rhino was revealed, says Mr Knights. But he says that inevitably painful process was essential. 'To bring about change, some people will always be offended,' he says. Some conservationists have been overly cautious about cultural sensitivity, when they should have been exposing the trade, says Mr Knights. 'Partly the reason it got to crisis situation is perhaps these groups were not more effective in earlier times. 'A lot of the problem with the whole rhino and tiger issue is that it was allowed to go on for so long that there was not an opportunity for everyone to sit around the table and gracefully sort it out,' he says. Too many conservationists are reluctant to acknowledge the undercover work of organisations like the EIA, which provided the hard evidence in the first place. 'A lot of the follow up - softer work if you like - is done off the back of that. I do think it is just a little bit out of order to then be very critical back at that,' he says. Others are more forthright. The Tiger Trust's Alex Lamond admires the work of the EIA and says too many conservationists are enmeshed with 'the establishment' of the country in which they operate to be effective. The Tiger Trust, which has run a series of finger-pointing adverts in Hong Kong over the last two years, is now devoting its efforts to tackling poaching in India. Resource-rich groups are better able to deal with the admittedly huge problem of demand for tiger parts in Asia, says Mr Lamond, which might come as a relief to those trying to engage the traditional-medicine community. 'It's not a great tradition at all,' he said, referring to the use of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine. He adds that such dependence has come about only since World War II. One day, Dr Paul But Pui-hay director of the Chinese Medicinal Material Research Centre at Chinese University will end the debate about the efficacy of tiger bone. In his freezer lies a tiger carcass whose bones Dr But will examine in clinical trials that will be the world's first. But whatever the laboratory results, they will not stem demand says Ms Mills, because people believe it works. Trader and president of the Hong Kong Chinese Medicine Merchant Association, Tommy Li Ying-sang says persuading middle-aged and elderly consumers against using tiger medicines is doomed to fail. 'They will say, 'so what if all the tigers go missing in the world?' - they only care about their health, money and livelihood.' But while the older generation perceives tigers as dangerous man-eaters, young people are more receptive to Western ideas including wildlife conservation and less tied to Chinese traditions, he says. Studying the WWF Chinese New Year banners he says quickly. 'The tiger is missing. It's very interesting.' Li shrugs at campaigns which focused on the tiger's perceived benefits in bed. To Westerners he says, 'all Chinese medicine is about sex. Rhino horn for sex - never, ' he says of the ingredient even more revered than tiger bone. 'Should we educate them ? I think there is no need.' The new campaigns suggest a new consensus reached between wildlife conservationists and Chinese medicine doctors who have learnt much about their one-time foes. 'We're on the right track in terms of getting to a point where illegal trade in tiger bone will eventually not be a threat to the survival of the tiger,' Ms Mills says. However habitat destruction and poaching to eliminate tiger 'pests' - the consequences of global commerce and poverty - will prove more intractable problems. They are far more formidable than traditional Chinese medicine, she says, adding in a bold statement bound to spark controversy amongst conservationists: 'If the tiger goes extinct it is not going extinct because of TCM.'