FEATURE - Chinese medicine means death to Russia's tigers
Date: 07-Jan-03
Country: RUSSIA
Author: Jon Boyle
Conservationists say the local authorities' prescription for economic rebirth of the poverty-stricken region will make it harder to protect one of the world's most majestic beasts.
"China uses virtually every part of the tiger, from the whiskers to the tail, for traditional Chinese medicine. Even the eyes," said Sergei Bereznyuk, director of the Phoenix Fund in Vladivostok which is leading efforts to protect the Amur tiger.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 poachers, driven by the voracious demands of traditional Chinese medicine, hunted the Amur tiger to the point of extinction in a few years.
Predators came in many forms: the wealthy in search of the thrills of big game hunting; poachers seeking lucrative skins and body parts for China's medicine men; destitute woodsmen trying to make ends meet after the demise of their traditional way of life. Michiel Hoette, a Vladivostok-based Dutchman working to save the tiger, says development of the region's economy is endangering the Amur tigers, the largest continuous tiger population in the world.
India has more tigers in the wild than Russia but their habitat is fragmented, unlike in the Primorye region which provides the perfect food base and cover for the big cat.
But it is facing large scale destruction by illegal logging which Russia's Audit Chamber says cost the federal budget $20 billion a year in lost taxes and customs duties.
LOGGING, DEVELOPMENT MENACE
Logging by legitimate businesses and the Russian forestry department, sometimes carried out with little regard for the environment, has only aggravated the situation.
Meanwhile, new roads criss-crossing the sparsely-populated region and increased agricultural development are leading to new settlements, increasing pressure on the tiger population.
"Research shows that tigers that live close to roads just don't live long. They are killed, so reproduction is less and mortality higher," said Hoette.
"If an area gets more developed, tiger mortality goes up and these areas with good protection cannot provide the inflow of tigers to sustain the population in the whole range any more.
"That means that even if you have a good food habitat in some places, the tigers just won't live there any more and the population will go down. And you get problems with inbreeding."
Short on energy supplies and jobs, the governor of the Primorye region, Sergei Darkin, is focused on developing rail links with the Korean peninsula and a major pipeline from the far east Sakhalin oil and gas fields.
Conservationists complain that new road projects have been rammed through without proper environmental impact assessments being carried out, a charge dismissed by the local authority.
Darkin, whose wife is a keen tiger conservationist, says ecologists should not worry: "I take this issue pretty seriously. I think the experience of the past few years has produced results, the number of these animals is increasing. And in some places they are presenting a threat to the population."
SPORT OF KINGPINS?
Such incidents are rare, say tiger defence groups, adding that mankind's constant expansion into tiger territory has made life for the great cats even more nasty, brutal and short. Even in a healthy population, male tigers live only six to seven years, such is the competition for mates and territory.
"New Russians", luxuriating in their new-found wealth of the last decade, are the real villains of the piece, their cash all too often buying them impunity.
"There are big problems with the new Russians," said Hoetter. "The people in charge, the authorities, the police chiefs, the judges, the prosecutors and big businessmen who are wealthy....and are very difficult to deal with.
"They are very powerful and have good networks and know most of the existing traditional law enforcement agencies, which are either involved in poaching themselves or they don't care to deal with these kinds of pe
