Last Wild Tigers Could Be Wiped Out In 10 Years
The world's few remaining wild tigers face total extinction over the next decade unless governments make a major effort to save them, the World Wide Fund for Nature warned. In a report on a 1998 protection campaign coinciding with the ChineseYear of the Tiger, the Swiss-based environmental body said only between 5,000 and 7,200 tigers were left -- compared with nearly 10 times that many at the start of the century. And it called on governments to criminalize the trade in products that claim to contain tiger derivatives.
``We cannot let up for one moment if we are to ensure that tigers will still exist in the wild by the next Chinese Year of the Tiger in 2010,'' said a commentary in the report by WWF species conservation official Elizabeth Kemf.
While there had been progress in tiger protection legislation during the year, the report said it was vital to redouble efforts to strengthen anti-poaching measures and eliminate the demand for tiger parts, centered mostly in Asia.
Tiger parts are widely used in the manufacture of traditional Chinese medicines, some of which are also in demand in Western countries.
But the animal is also declining in numbers because of pressure on its natural habitat and the disappearance of other species on which it preys as humans move into previously uninhabited areas to live and work the land.
The WWF said one major triumph during 1998 was the passage of legislation by the U.S. Congress banning the import and sale of any product claiming to contain ingredients made of rhinoceros -- another endangered species -- or tiger parts.
Additionally, a Tiger Emergency Fund has been launched, support has been given to India's Tiger Conservation Program, and work has been carried out in Russia's Far East, home of the disappearing Siberian tiger.
But the report said latest information showed that the South China tiger, which numbered some 4,000 in the 1950s, was now down to only 20 or 30 in the wild, and could soon follow the Bali, Caspian and Java tigers into extinction.
It also called on North Korea, Bhutan and Laos -- where the demand for tiger products remains strong -- to join the United Nations' CITES convention which aims to eliminate the global trade in endangered species.
Source: Reuters
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