Jonathan Watts - When a Billion Chinese Jump

China came late to conservation. Although certain areas were nominally protected more than fifty years ago, it was only after the country opened up to the outside world in 1978 that any systematic attempt was made to track the populations of species and support those most at risk of extinction. After that, the central and provincial governments set aside 2,531 nature reserves. 17These actions may have been delayed too long. When the United States began protecting nature around the turn of the twentieth century, its population density was ten people to a square kilometer. When China started, its population was squeezed 145 to the same area. There was not much room left for other forms of life.

Many environmentalists—foreign and domestic—believe Chinese culture is skewed against the wild. There, nature has traditionally been valued for its utility and scope for consumption. It was something to tame and control. Harris noted the deserts and mountains of the far west are often described in official writing as elie, which could be translated as “vile” or “of low quality.” The word for wilderness, huangdi, also means “wasteland.” The nation’s scientists showed little interest in studying wildlife in the wild. Biology in China was traditionally taught in the laboratory rather than the field. 18

Until the 1990s, the signs on cages in Beijing Zoo identified which parts of each animal could be eaten or used in Chinese traditional medicine. Among the very few wildlife books before then was Economic Birds of Sichuan, which listed species that were either medicinal or tasty. 19After that, attitudes started to change as the impact of development—and the overutilization it brings—became better known.

History helps to explain the divergent viewpoints. In the West, the systematic study of nature did not hit full stride until industrialization. Then too, utility was a major motivation. Many researchers looked to the wild for new dyes, ingredients, chemicals, and other resources. In China, the most influential study of natural resources came far earlier. Li Shizhen (1518–93) was the author of the premier pharmacopoeia for Chinese traditional medicine, the Bencao Gangmu , which listed more than 1,800 treatments. Along with other traditional medical guides, this led millions to believe that stewed turtle cures cancer, crocodile meat relieves asthma, pangolin scales regulate menstruation, and scorpion venom helps stroke victims.

More than four centuries after his death, Dr. Li’s remedies continue to have ever more serious consequences for wildlife. Though well intentioned and respected for his scholarship, Li wrote in an age of abundant natural resources and low population density. Applied in the modern age, his prescriptions have become death warrants for many of the species he named. About 1,500 varieties of flora and fauna are close to being wiped out in the wild because of the demand for traditional medicine. 20Other populations have increased, but only in captivity. Mixed with modern free-market principles and animal husbandry techniques, Li’s teachings on traditional medicine have led to the establishment of commercial breeding centers for several rare animals. Though their owners often claim to be conservationists, most facilities are little more than battery farms.

“Our park is a salvation for wildlife,” said the guide at the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village, in Guizhou Province, as he led me and the rest of the tour group around spacious pens and cages filled with tigers, lions, black swans, and black bears.

The more fortunate beasts shared a few football pitch–sized enclosures. Others provided entertainment for tourists. Inside the “Dream Theater”—an elevated gladiatorlike arena surrounded by nets—performers with whips and sticks prodded tigers to jump through flaming hoops and ride on the backs of horses. Outdoors, beasts paraded on a carnival float, along with monkeys riding camels and a bear cycling across a high wire without a safety net. One tiger was so placid—or doped—that he sat and posed for pictures beside tourists.

But the most compellingly gory spectacle was feeding time. From a viewing balcony, I watched alongside children, parents, and elderly tourists in fascinated horror as a water buffalo munched its last clumps of grass next to a pen in which a hungry tiger paced back and forth. As soon as the keepers lifted the gate, the predator bounded out and chased down its terrified prey. Within a minute, it sank its teeth and claws into the victim’s back, raking at the skin as the buffalo cried and defecated in pain and fear. The bovine shook the tiger off and galloped away, but the respite was only temporary. The hunter jumped again and again at its neck, biting deep into the flesh until its jowls were scarlet with blood.

Squeamishness was apparently inappropriate and misplaced. The guide told us the hunt was an important training exercise for animals that would one day be released into the wild. It did not look like that would happen any time soon. The predator was too domesticated to finish off its prey. After fifteen minutes watching the bloody mauling, the crowd began to lose interest and wander away. The keepers shooed the tiger back to its cage, then dragged the wounded buffalo away on a cart for slaughter in the park’s abattoir.

The real reason for the bloodfest was economic. The park desperately needed to attract tourists because it was losing a fortune on its farming business.

Xiongsen’s animals were a commercial investment. The black bears were there for their bile, which was harvested through a hole punched into the side of their stomachs. The lions were raised so their meat and bones could be sold to restaurants and pharmacies. The black swans were an eco-stock holding. With only 300 left in the world, the guide told us each one was worth $20,000. But the most valuable of them all, the tiger, was proving a huge loss maker.

The park had staked its future on speed-breeding tigers, the most prized animal in Dr. Li’s ancient pharmacopoeia. In terms of production it was ruthlessly efficient. The single breeding center, which was no bigger than Regent’s Park, contained almost as many tigers as the entire wild population in India. Then, in 1993, the government banned the tiger trade. This was lauded by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species as an important step toward stabilizing the species. But for Xiongsen it proved a financial disaster.

Xiongsen’s cub nursery was the start of a production line that churned out hundreds of tigers each year. They were far too genetically intermixed and tame to survive outside the farm. Most spent their lives lying around listlessly or pacing back and forth between the wire and concrete of tiny cages. Wandering away from the tourist areas, I saw that most of the animals were crammed together in thirteen rows of a dozen small cages, each containing up to four tigers. With the market blocked by the government ban, these assets ended up frozen, both economically and literally.

A keeper still with blood on his hands from dragging the wounded water buffalo to the butcher told me Xiongsen was desperate for the government to lift the ban. “Every part of the animal is valuable, but we can’t sell them at the moment because it is forbidden by law. One or two tigers die every year. We put them in freezers, where they will stay until the government gives us permission to sell.”

He said he has not been paid for three months. The park had filed for bankruptcy. Every day it had to pay hundreds of thousands of yuan to feed the growing population of animals. But the owner, Zhou Weisen, a former snake trapper, raised the stakes by accelerating the breeding of tigers. Conservationists accused him of using the animals to blackmail the government. “Either relax the ban or take responsibility for slaughtering more than a thousand tigers that no one can afford to feed” was the unspoken message.