Conservation experts from 12 countries lobbied hard at this week's International Tiger Symposium here to ensure the ban on the trade in tiger parts stays. Tiger farmers in China are pressurising their government to push for lifting the 14-year-old ban, at least on products from farmed tigers. (\'Asia\'s tiger economy\')
Experts we spoke to said lifting the ban would be a death sentence for wild tigers, as it would provide legal avenues for the laundering of wild tiger products through.

"This is not the time to feed the interests of a few already-rich tiger farmers when people in this region have so worked hard for so many years to make the ban successful," said Susan Lieberman, director of WWF's Global Species Programme and chair of the International Tiger Symposium.

"A clear consensus emerged in the International Tiger Symposium that poaching of tigers in the wild must be combated urgently and that it requires immediate, coordinated efforts both by countries with tiger populations and countries driving the black market demand for tiger parts,"Lieberman added.

The symposium, organised by WWF and TRAFFIC International, included tiger scientists, policy experts, and wildlife trade authorities. Seventeen representatives from China reportedly attended the conference, eight of them government officials. The Chinese government has not yet responded on the status of the farmers' petition.

Mallika Aryal