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Legalizing tiger trade would spell doom for wild tigers

I was puzzled to see the Zimbabwean game ranching model being used to justify tiger farming in Barun Mitra’s August 15th op-ed. Mitra is actually advocating tiger farming, rather than ranching, so his comparisons with the Zimbabwean model are both misleading and uninformed.

First, let me clarify the difference between wildlife farming and game ranching. Wildlife farming raises undomesticated animals in confined quarters, feeding and breeding them intensively, usually for slaughter. Game ranching manages undomesticated animals in their native habitats, usually with the intention of harvesting or allowing hunting of them for profit.

I am a strong advocate of using economic incentives to preserve biodiversity. Not because I am a fan of libertarian economics, but because all too often I have seen that wildlife loses the economic tug of war with big business.

In Zimbabwe, game ranching yields higher profits than cattle ranching. A system where giraffes crop the treetops, while kudu browse on shrubs and zebras graze in grasslands is perfect resource partitioning that has evolved over millennia. As a result, wildlife can be stocked at higher densities than cattle in some savanna types without degrading the habitat.

Game ranching began in Zimbabwe in 1961, when the high court ruled that individuals could own wild animals found on private land. Attitudes towards game ranching were initially negative, but as game ranchers made profits, the practice spread. By 1995, 15% of all the commercial farmers in Zimbabwe were registered members of the Game Producers Association of Zimbabwe, and neighboring countries were interested too.

Wildlife conservationists in Africa have been very supportive of game ranching because it satisfies the twin aims of biodiversity conservation and profit. For game ranchers, the biodiversity component is an unintended consequence of a business venture. To conservationists these unintended consequences are of paramount importance.

Game ranchers only deliberately stock large herbivores on their land. To introduce large predators, like tigers, on their ranch would be like getting the cookie monster to run a bake-sale—disastrous for profit margins. Clearly, Zimbabwe ranching model is not applicable to tigers or any other large predator.

Tiger farms in China keep animals in appalling conditions so that tourists can drive through their enclosures and dangle live chickens from car windows. The tourists get cheap thrills as inbred tigers, lions and “ligers” pounce on their cars and swallow the chickens in a single bite. Farms get entry fees and profits from overpriced live chickens. Clearly this situation has plenty of material to keep the humane society busy, but what does tiger farming have to do with the conservation of wild tigers?

The answer is: very little. Wild tigers are in serious danger of extinction, but captive tiger populations are exploding. Captive tigers can’t be reintroduced to the wild, because these socialized animals tend to go straight for human settlements when released. Owing to this fact, conservationists find no value in tiger farming as a conservation tool.

However, now that farmers want to legalize the trade in tiger parts so they can market their “produce”, they most certainly pose a conservation threat. In fact, they have been stockpiling dead tigers in freezers, waiting for the day that China’s 1993 ban is lifted. In his own economic argument, Mitra missed a serious flaw, which will bring disastrous, albeit unintended, consequences for wild tigers.

If a legally farmed carcass can fetch $40,000, it will not relieve pressure on wild tigers as he argues. Instead, for every legally farmed $40,000 tiger carcass in the market place, there will be twenty poached tigers from Sumatra, India, Russia and Thailand on special offer for $2,000. I may not be a libertarian economist, but any old Joe can tell you what the unintended consequences of this simple, free market will be—the swift extinction of wild tigers.

Brian Gratwicke D.Phil (Oxon) is Zimbabwean and the Assistant Director of Save The Tiger Fund, a special program of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation dedicated to the conservation of wild tigers.