Wildlife farming: the case of lions and tigers
Today we will be talking about wildlife farming. For the ones of you that don’t know what wildlife farming is, it is an industry that breeds animals with a purpose. That purpose can be to supply or directly engaging in the commercial trade of animal products, such as body parts or derivatives. Two animals that are extremely popular on wildlife farms are lions and tigers, in countries like South Africa, China, Vietnam and more.
Let’s start with lions!
Lions in the wild have disappeared from 94 percent of their historic range in Africa, and continent-wide during the past 25 years, their numbers have halved to fewer than an estimated 25,000. They’re listed as vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) (National Geographic, 2019).
The number of captive lions in South Africa has been estimated at between 6,000 and 8,000, but there may now be as many as 10,000, according to conservationist Ian Michler, the protagonist of the 2015 documentary Blood Lions, which goes behind the scenes to examine the country’s lion-farming industry (National Geographic, 2019). I really recommend watching the documentary, if you haven’t already. For me it was really hard to watch because lions are my favourite animal (Bea), but it’s really important to educate yourself about the topic.
Lion farms are related to what is called Canned Hunting Industry. This industry is divided in three phases: cub petting, walking with lions and canned hunting.
- The facilities are usually full of tourists or volunteers, that pay to pet, bottle-feed, and take selfies with cubs. The volunteers are “recruited” to help hand raise captive-bred lion cubs, on the false premise that they will be released into the wild as part of a lion conservation initiative.
- When those cubs are too big to be bottle-feed, they go to the second stage, where tourists walk alongside lions. As the lions age, they become too dangerous to pet and to be walked with, and they’re often sold to breeding and hunting ranches.
- Some ranches may offer “canned” hunts, in which lions are confined to fenced areas, they are attracted with food and the “hunters” shot them. Sport hunters may pay as much as $50,000 to kill lions so they can keep the skins and heads as trophies. The bones and other unwanted parts may be exported to Asia, where they’re used in traditional medicine (National Geographic, 2019) & (Born Free, 2020).
The animals involved are habituated to people from an early age, often through being hand-reared and bottle-fed, so they are not afraid of people, making them easy targets for a rifle or bow when it comes to the hunt (Born Free, 2020).
We briefly talked about the tiger situation on our last post (Most Trafficked wildlife)
Almost the same happens to tigers. In a lot of places across Asia, tigers are bred and kept in often appalling conditions on “tiger farms”, so people can pay to bottle-feed and take selfies with the tigers or buy their body parts and products.
Tiger farms can house hundreds of tigers in row upon row of barren and cramped enclosures. Many of these facilities have been implicated in illegal trade (Born Free, 2020).
Many of these tiger breeding centres – which often include entertainment attractions like the Tiger Temple – are likely to be involved in the illegal trade of tigers and tiger products, particularly given their incredibly high operating costs. They undermine efforts to protect wild tigers and halt the illegal trade by complicating enforcement activities, and by normalizing and legitimizing the sale of tiger parts and products, which in turn drives up demand (WWF, 2020).
The number of tigers in tiger farms has escalated rapidly in recent years, with 7,000-8,000 tigers reportedly held in a large number of facilities throughout East and Southeast Asia – most notably in China, Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam (WWF, 2020). That’s more than double the number of tigers left in the wild.
Skins from farmed tigers are turned into rugs for luxury home decor, skeletons are soaked in vats of wine to make tiger bone ‘health tonic’, teeth, claws and other body parts are also in demand (Born Free, 2020).
The current crisis of captive breeding operations within lion and tiger farms is a threat to their wild populations in two significant ways:
- The movement (or leakage) of products from farms to consumer markets complicates and thus undermines enforcement efforts aimed at identifying and stopping the trade in wild lion and tiger
- Those farms help perpetuate (and grow) demand by legitimizing or normalizing the demand for lion/tiger parts in a region currently experiencing profound and sustained growth of consumer classes. Even a modest increase in the demand for products could trigger immense poaching pressures on wild populations (WWF, 2020).
If you have the “opportunity” to do any of those activities,
DON’T DO IT!
References
Blood Lions documentary: https://vimeo.com/157818314
Born Free. 2019. Canned hunting animation: https://www.instagram.com/p/B42_f5DBXUS/
Born Free. 2020. Tiger farming. Source: https://www.bornfree.org.uk/tiger-farming
Born Free. 2020. Lion farming & canned hunting. Source: https://www.bornfree.org.uk/canned-hunting
WWF. 2020. WWF and tiger farming. Source: https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/wildlife/species_news/tiger_farming/
WWF. 2020. What I saw at a Chinese tiger farm and what it means for wild tigers. Source: https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-i-saw-at-a-chinese-tiger-farm-and-what-it-means-for-wild-tigers
National Geographic. 2019. Exclusive: Inside a controversial South African lion farm. Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/11/lion-farm-south-africa/
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Love,
Bea & João
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