In China, around 6,000 captive tigers are raised on “farms,” often under inhumane conditions, and their pelts sold for hefty sums in a poorly regulated market upheld through legal loopholes by the Chinese government. Breeding tigers on these farms is legal, but sale of their parts is not — something that may be about to […]
Tag: china
China to shut down its ivory trade by the end of 2017
China will shut down its domestic ivory trade by the end of 2017, according to an announcement made today by the Chinese government. The announcement comes more than a year after China’s President Xi Jinping and United States President Barack Obama pledged to enact “nearly complete bans” on the import and export of ivory, an […]
POLL: Should the export of elephants to China be banned?
More than 30 wild elephants were being readied on Friday evening for an airlift from Zimbabwe to captivity in China, according to wildlife advocates. The founder of Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, Johnny Rodrigues, said on Friday that their plane was still at Victoria Falls airport because officials could not find scales big enough to weigh […]
China accused of defying its own ban on breeding tigers to profit from body parts
China has been accused of deceiving the international community by allowing a network of farms to breed thousands of captive tigers for the sale of their body parts, in breach of their own longstanding ban on the trade. The Chinese government has allowed about 200 specialist farms to hold an estimated 6,000 tigers for slaughter, […]
POLL: Should China’s dog meat festival be banned?
Although dogs have been eaten in parts of East Asia for hundreds—and possibly thousands—of years, a relatively new festival in Yulin, China, has sparked global controversy and polarized many Chinese, over both the treatment of the animals and the practice of eating them. The ten-day Lychee and Dog Meat Festival started in Yulin, in southern […]
Over 40 years, half of China’s land vertebrates disappear
From 1970 to 2010, the world’s populations of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish shrunk by about 52 percent. China is right in the middle of the global pack with a nearly 50-percent loss of its land-based vertebrates, according to a recent report by the international NGO World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The situation […]
Himalayan Forest Thrush: Scientists Discover New Species of Bird
A group of scientists led by Dr. Per Alström of Uppsala University has described a new species of bird from the northeastern India and adjacent parts of China. Dr. Alström and his Chinese and European colleagues named the new species Zoothera salimalii. “The scientific name honors the great Indian ornithologist Sálim Ali, in recognition of […]
POLL: Should African countries be allowed to sell elephants to China?
In October 2014, tens of young elephants were taken from their family groups in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, where they were held in a capture unit for eight months until July 2015. That’s when 24 were flown to the Qingyuan quarantine facility in Guangdong Province before being transferred to Chimelong Safari Park, also in Guangdong. […]