Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

One of the important outcomes of the Kathmandu World Tiger Workshop, was the inability of some NGOs and governments to persuade China to give up tiger farming. The pressure has contined after the meeting. WWF has contributed a youtube video claiming that tiger farms are a 'ticket to extinction' (threat to wild tigers). The Chinese stance has been pretty consistent over the last few years.

First, the Chinese no longer believe that demand for tiger parts can be driven low enough to deter poaching. They might have believed this was possible in the mid-1990s, but acceleration in tiger poaching after they introduced their domestic ban has made them skeptics. An important point is that there are other conservationists who are also skeptics. Not everyone believes that the domestic ban has helped.

Second, they don't believe that their farms generate demand for tiger teeth or claws in Indonesia, tiger meat in Vietnam and tiger skins in Kashmir and Tibet. Evidence from illegal activity within China prints a fairly clear picture. Smuggling and detection of illegal traffic of wild tiger parts occurs away from regions with tiger farms. It is proximate to regions that border range states. Nobody in China is inclined to believe that Traditional Chinese Medicine markets drive demand for bengali tiger skins (India's bulk 'illegal' export). Most interdictions of tiger bone originate out of Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam (of Indo-Chinese tigers).

In short, the black market for tiger parts is diffuse and widely separated. The failure of the conservation strategy to save tigers isn't caused by China. Rather, a strategy that makes tigers worth $US50k to criminals is. Given that there are lots of different markets for different tiger products, there's no single driver of poaching- nor is there any single solution.

Okay, so what should we be talking about to save tigers.

First, we need to be talking about supply-side approaches. The odds of us getting less than 300 people a year in Asia to want a fresh, poached tiger, is vanishingly remote. Demand-side measures aren't going to kick in fast enough. It didn't work with prohibition and alcohol- it doesn't seem to work with wildlife.

Supply-side approaches mean things like trans-locations, successful re-wilding projects and, dare I mention it, tiger farms. Ex situ methods are becoming increasingly important as there are few safe areas left in Asia for tigers. That means, there are few reserves that are big enough, with enough prey items and where the local human population is tolerant of these big carnivores. Ex situ may be just second best solutions, but we don't seem to be able to implement a first-best solution in most range states.

The second is losing this whole focus on tigers. The reality is that most poachers take many times more leopards, otters and other similar species. Most tiger poachers are really leopard poachers. So you need to concentrate interdiction and enforcement against leopard poachers. That way you will net in tiger poachers anyway. Ignoring the plight of some of these other species because they are not as charismatic as tigers, doesn't help any of these targeted species.

Third, no-one has beaten an illegal market by concentrating at the consumer-end of the supply chain. The best way is to tackle the source. The reason (especially for wildlife) is that poachers tend to be geographically specific. They live close to, or inside reserves. With tigers especially, the cooperation of local people is crucial to the illegal network. It's just more efficient to put resources into enforcement at this end. Conversely consumers of wildlife products are often harder to detect because they are dispersed (in different countries) and often resourceful enough to conceal their activities for long periods.

For tigers, this is a lot easier said than done. Not everybody regards tigers with great fondness, and proximity tends to increase their pest status. When Indira Ghandi launched Operation Tiger (via a system of dedicated reserves), locals who lived next to or inside the reserves were aghast. When told that tourists would provide compensation against stock losses (and loss of family members), someone pithily remarked that if tourists wanted to see tigers, the tigers should be released in Hyderabad.

One thing I've been working on recently is a paper on the black-market in China for tiger-products.

Figure: Polished Sumatran Tiger Canine


Essentially, if we don't understand how this market is organised and what drives the participants, reducing poaching will be much harder.

Here's a brief outline of the main points.

• 
  There is no single black market for tiger-products. The Chinese black-market is about two products- skins and bones. The market has geographical separation. Amur (Siberian) tigers are found in the North-East, Indo-Chinese and Bengalis in the South-East, and Bengalis in the West. So far these markets are not connected.
  
  Demand is medicinal. The chief source of demand for bone is medicinal. Demand has been suppressed by Chinese law enforcement but demand has not been stigmatized. The likelihood that education campaigns will reduce demand by enough does not look credible.
  
  And most importantly- people aren't smuggling tiger-penises into China. The payoff for such aphrodisiacs aren't economic. Nobody spends $US50k for a hard-on.
  
  There is no single smuggling mode. Tiger products have entered China via bus, train, truck, plane and boat. Smugglers have a large number of potential crossing points and modes of transport. Tiger parts are a also very low volume product. Together this means that interdiction rates are dismal, and the prospect for improvement weak.
  
  Real tiger products have different distribution channels. In the West, Tibetan connections have increased the penetration of tiger skins into Qinghai and Gansu. In other regions bone is traded secretly with few intermediaries. This is likely to reflect the harsh, punitive penalties involved if caught.
  
  It's not that profitable. A lot of conservation literature claims that tiger smuggling is extremely profitable. E.g. EIA says that if a tiger costs $1500 to poach and sells for $16,500 in China, the profit is 900%. Sure, if the poacher can teleport instantly, without negotiation costs, risks and transport costs the product to the customer. The reality is that wildlife is like every other illegal market. Most of the final price comes from transport costs, compensating participants for the risks and the like. Just like drugs, procurement costs are a trivial part of the price. It's the distribution network that takes the real commitment of resources.
  
  Poachers are hard to catch Expert hunters wandering around forests in Asia can evade capture for years. Some of the participants have been at it since the 1970s. The very environment that tigers live in hinders effective policing by (under-resourced and sometimes corrupt) local rangers. If it takes 10+ years to crack a smuggling ring, then the smugglers are in the driving seat.
  

What this basically means is that poaching isn't going to be stopped in most places by law enforcement. And we can't realistically stop the flow over the Chinese border. And if the distributions are small and secretive, then good luck to anyone trying to catch them.