ending the tiger trade and the sale of tiger parts

Enhancing enforcement

IFAW works with CITES, INTERPOL and other intergovernmental organizations to reduce the international trade of tigers and their parts and products and promote effective law enforcement to stop tiger smuggling.

IFAW seeks to strengthen national laws and regulations to end any trade in tiger products both from the wild and from tiger farms.

IFAW has worked with political champions and submitted proposals calling for the Chinese state council to keep the tiger trade ban in place. In Russia, we’ve campaigned for the government to set criminal punishments with maximum imprisonment up to seven years for the harvest of and trade in rare and endangered wildlife, including the Amur tiger, and in 2013, those laws went into effect.

Auction house cancellations

The Chinese Forestry notice banning the auction of endangered species, specifically tiger bone, rhino horn and elephant ivory in January 2012 prompted many auction houses to cancel planned auctions containing parts and products from wildlife species, including tigers.

The removal of endangered wildlife from auctions resulted in a 40 percent reduction of overall auction turnover in mainland China.

Opposing tiger farming

While fewer than 50 wild tigers remain in China, more than 6,000 tigers are held captive on a few huge commercial farms, where they are bred to make tiger-bone wine and other tonic products.

Farming tigers for trade stimulates market demand for dead tigers and fuels poaching of wild tigers throughout Asia.

IFAW's investigation of tiger farming businesses in China exposed the danger of tiger farming to the remaining wild tiger populations at the CITES Conference of the Parties (CoP) in 2007.

An overwhelming majority of the countries to CITES adopted a decision opposing any country from “farming tigers for the trade of their parts and derivatives.”

Within China, which has been the largest market for tiger bones and body parts, we have partnered with the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) community, which now rejects the use of tiger parts and promotes the use of alternatives.

IFAW is also undertaking innovative public awareness campaigns to reduce consumer demand for tiger body parts.

Appealing to consumers’ morality

Tigers have been featured in several regional IFAW advertising campaigns designed to combat wildlife crime.

For example, to appeal to the moral conscience of the Chinese public to stigmatize wildlife consumption, IFAW’s 2013 advertisement shows mutilated Chinese characters, symbolizing the fate endangered species suffer at the hand of man.

By removing one crucial stroke off the Chinese character representing elephant, tiger, bear and human being respectively, the ad asks

“When we take the tusk out of elephants, the bone out of tigers, the gall bladder out of bears, what does that make us? Are we merely beings with no humanity?”

Learn More and Take Action To Stop The Tiger Trade

IFAW continues to work every day to fight for the lives of these animals. Read about IFAW’s latest campaigns to rescue captive big cats in the United States, as well as its efforts to stop wildlife crime all around the world.