BEIJING - China must resist pressure to lift a ban on selling tiger parts as doing so would push the endangered species closer to extinction, an animal rights group said Tuesday.
Tiger skins are valuable and considered status symbols in areas such as Tibet, while bones and other parts of the animal are used in traditional medicines and as aphrodisiacs.
China banned trade in tiger parts in 1993, but animal rights activists said they feared pressure was growing on the government to lift the ban, especially for tigers bred in captivity.
"To overturn the ban and allow any trade in captive-bred tiger products would waste all the efforts invested in saving wild tigers. It would be a catastrophe for tiger conservation," said Steven Broad, executive director of TRAFFIC, a monitoring program set up by WWF and the World Conservation Union.
"The tiger survives today thanks in large part to China's prompt, strict and committed action," Broad said in a statement.
TRAFFIC, which is based in Gland, Switzerland, said it had evidence that investors in large-scale captive-breeding tiger farms wanted trade legalized for their products. It estimated there are now about 4,000 tigers in these farms.
The wildlife groups estimate that fewer than 7,000 tigers remain in the wild. About 9,000 exist in captivity, the majority in the United States and China.
