PRESS RELEASE - 15th November 1999

 CHINESE GOVERNMENT COMMITS TO ENDING LIVE FEEDING
 IN WILDLIFE PARKS


 ANIMALS ASIA FOUNDATION - POSITION STATEMENT

On Friday 15th October 1999, during an investigation of the Xiongsheng Bear and
Tiger Entertainment City in Guilin, China, the Animals Asia Foundation was
shocked to see pictures of our own Directors used in the advertising and
promotion of the facility.  We had originally visited the park in 1998, together
with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, prior to its official opening,
in order to gain a greater understanding of the park's working practices and
future objectives.  Our impression of the park at that time was poor and
although we refused a subsequent invitation to attend the opening ceremony, we
supplied animal enrichment programmes and later met the Director in Hong Kong in
an attempt to persuade him to convert the facility into a rescue and education
centre.

Upon our return last month, we observed captive bred tigers attempting to kill
domestic species in a concrete arena, for the entertainment of the general
public. The tigers had no understanding of how to kill their prey, and caused
considerable stress, pain and suffering to the animals they attacked.

The training was conducted "in preparation for their return to the wild", but
the methods employed carried no scientific basis.  It is crucial to ensure that
the animals are not so comfortable in the presence of humans that they might be
a danger to the local community upon release. These tigers displayed no fear of
their trainers who, in turn, encouraged their aggressive behaviour towards
domestic species.  This is a dangerous combination and, upon release into the
wild, would undoubtedly lead to the tigers further extinction, from farmers
protecting their livestock and their livelihood.

In addition, we were witness to the illegal possession, promotion and sale of
tiger bone wine and filmed the entire transaction, showing documented evidence
of illegal purchase.

The owner of this illegal and abusive facility has been flouting international
legislation regarding the illegal trade in tiger bone and has deceived the
Chinese government by defying it's own national regulations.

Although it is too late for those animals who have suffered and died in the name
of entertainment, we can at least now help those that are currently being
exploited and applaud the government's decision to ban wild animal feeding
forthwith.

The Animals Asia Foundation commends the Chinese Government for their statements
against animal cruelty and now appeals for the introduction of solid animal
welfare legislation to protect all wild, domesticated and endangered species.

STATEMENT FROM CWCA
On the afternoon of 15th October 1999, the Animals Asia Foundation reflected their views to us concerning a video tape made by a British journalist about cruelty to animals at the Bear and Tiger Entertainment City in Guilin, Guangxi.  Our Deputy Secretary-General, Mr Chen Runsheng, made the following three point statement on behalf of our Association:
1. The Chinese Government and the China Wildlife Conservation Association are firmly against acts of cruelty to animals, and are against using live large farm animals to feed predatory animals, such as tigers and lions.
2. The action taken in 1993 of destroying tiger bones and rhinoceros horns in Guangzhou and Harbin indicates the firm position of the Chinese Government against the sale and use of products and manufactured goods made from these wild animals.  Such position has not changed.
3. We have reflected to the authorities in charge with regards to the situation from the information provided by the Animals Asia Foundation.  We suggest that the government conduct investigations and deal with the matter.        

Xiongsheng Park, Guilin, China.
REPORT FROM ANIMALS ASIA FOUNDATION on XIONGSHENG PARK
The park began construction in February 1998. On the 10th April 1998, Jill
Robinson, Boris Chiao, Dr. Gail Cochrane (now from Animals Asia Foundation) and Grace Ge Gabriel (International Fund for Animal Welfare), visited there and spoke with the owner, Mr. Zhou Wei Sen. At that time, Mr. Zhou claimed that he possessed 6 south China tigers (from 4 provincial zoos), 4 Bengal tigers, 60 Siberian tigers, 130 Asiatic black bears, 1 brown bear, 19 African lions, 1 clouded leopard, and 1 golden cat.
Mr. Zhou advised that he had successfully bred 90 Asiatic black bear cubs and hoped to have bred 500 tigers by the year 2000 and 1,000 tigers by the year 2005.
We were introduced to Mr. Guo, who advised that he was the top expert for breeding tigers in China and was training those captively born at the park to "have the wildness put back into them". This entailed guidance from human instructors, who led the young tigers by collar and lead into an arena where they were "trained" to attack livestock. Apparently, since the training began, the tigers are stronger, wilder, and have better fertility than before.
Mr. Zhou advised that his expenditure amounted to RMB100,000 per cat per year. The species are strictly separated and will eventually be put back into the wild; into a nature reserve. He was also intending to place the bears into wildlife reserves by 2005.
None of Mr. Zhou's statements on releasing the animals to zoos and reserves were substantiated by any available study and neither was he aware of the local or international bear and tiger experts we suggested.
Throughout the day, we offered various recommendations for humane consideration and questioned current methods for wildness training which were backed by no international validation. We advised that foreign tourists would be horrified to see such violent acts of cruelty. Dr. Cochrane also indicated her concern that the dominant tigers would always eat first in such a small enclosure, leaving the less dominant animals to fend for themselves each time.
On return to Hong Kong, we mailed enrichment programmes for improving the bears' environment and invited Mr. Zhou to our bear sanctuary in southern China.

15th October 1999
Jill Robinson and Boris Chiao returned to the Bear and Tiger Entertainment City, after learning of some disturbing reports regarding the illegal sale of tiger bone wine and extreme cruelty to pigs and bulls used in entertainment.
On arrival at the park, we joined a local tour group and were invited into a classroom where a lecturer was promoting the usage and sale of bear and tiger bone wines. She advised that they were not allowed to sell tiger products because they are a protected species, but that by making a donation of RMB200, the customer would then receive a free small bottle of tiger bone wine. In addition, if the customer paid RMB500 they would receive a large bottle of wine, together with an export certificate; "so that there would be no trouble taking it home". She added that they deliberately don't label the bottles with 'tiger bone' so that it is easier to export.
We were led into another room, which held several large urns, apparently containing tiger bones and wine. At one point, the seller opened the lid to one of the pots and quickly pulled out a tiger skull before replacing the lid. She did not allow any photographs.
Later in the afternoon, we attended the wild tiger show in an indoor auditorium, where we were to witness young tigers attempting to kill a bull and a pig.
The pig was led out first into the arena, before the keepers closed the gates behind him and left him looking bewildered as he faced the bars which separated him from the tigers enclosures. Two of the gates began to open and each of the tigers behind bounded across to the nervous animal. They appeared to be more interested in play and, began nipping at the pigs legs, whilst he grew more frightened.
The tigers became more excited and, although the pig squealed and circled many times to keep his more vulnerable sides away from the cats, it wasn't long before they had brought him down. The pig began to defecate in fright and several large wounds were seen on his body whilst one tiger kept him pinned to the ground for several minutes by the throat. The pig was badly shocked and wounded, but still alive and staggering when the performance was brought to an end. Although the tigers had the basic instinct for killing the pig, it seems that they had little idea of how to put it into practice and considered it to be a game.
The bull was then led out into the arena and, after several seconds, some gates opened releasing two different tigers than before. These tigers were larger than the previous pair and intent on attack. One immediately pounced onto the bull's back and began raking at its skin, whilst the animal bellowed in pain. Once the bull's skin was punctured and the blood began to flow, the first tiger refused to let his quarry go. For the next thirty minutes, he continually chewed away at the bull's back, stripping and eating pieces of flesh, or licking the blood from the wound. The bull continually bawled in pain and stress, whilst struggling to stand and walk away. Each time, he would be dragged back down onto the ground by the tiger who was trying to eat his flesh, but had no idea how to keep him still.
As he grew weaker, the bull would sit prone on the ground for several minutes, before trying to rise, whilst the tiger continued to feed from his back. People began to leave the arena but the tiger was allowed to continue feeding.
After a while, a man driving a diesel truck entered the ring and began driving straight for the bull. It became obvious that he was not going to stop and proceeded to drive over the bull's head. The animal alternated between groaning in pain, or silent in shock, and desperately tried to rise from the ground on several occasions. The truck continued reversing and driving over him; whilst spewing diesel fumes in his face.
The purpose was to separate the bull from the tiger, but the latter was persistent and continued running back to the bull once the truck had passed over its body to finish his meal. Eventually, the tigers were shooed away and the bull sat crumpled, shocked and bleeding, in the middle of the ring.
The show was over..
That same afternoon, the Animals Asia Foundation alerted the China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) and IFAW Beijing to what we had seen. The CWCA registered their concern, both with the cruelty and the illegal sale of tiger parts and requested us to issue three statements on behalf of the government:
"The CWCA and the Chinese government has always been strongly against animal cruelty - to all species.
The Chinese government has always insisted on not using tiger bone or tiger products and it is strictly forbidden to export all tiger products.
With the information that we have been given by the Animals Asia Foundation, the CWCA will immediately inform related departments and conduct an investigation."

Notes:
1.  Conservation status of the tiger:
There are no more than 7,500 tigers remaining in the wild and there may actually be as few as 5,000. These numbers are based on the most recent statistics available to the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group, indicating that 3060-4735 Indian Tigers, 437-506 Siberian Tigers, 20-30 South China Tigers, 400-500 Sumatran Tigers and 1180-1790 Indo-Chinese Tigers remain in the wild. Three sub species of tiger have become extinct since the 1940's.
Source: TRAFFIC Network Factfile.

2.  Protection in China:
China joined CITES in 1981.
In June 1993, the State Council issued a brief circular which said that it was illegal to sell, purchase, import, export or even carry tiger bones and rhinoceros horns in China. It ordered that they no longer be used in medicines, but the ban would be delayed for six months to allow merchants to liquidate existing stocks. Source: The New York Times.

3.  Medicinal Use:
In traditional Oriental medicine, nearly every part of the tiger has had a medicinal use. The Chinese Materia Medica (1957) lists 13 parts of the tiger used in medicinal preparations, including eyeballs, nose, teeth, whiskers, skin, stomach, bile, blood, fat, flesh, testes, faeces and bones. Today, however, tiger bone - particularly the humerus or upper front leg bone - is the only part remaining in the modern TCM Materia Medica and is most often prescribed to treat rheumatism.
Alternatives:
"There are over 30 medicines for rheumatism, including erythrina bark and arge leafed gentian. Tiger bone is just one of the choices". Dr. Lo Yan Wo, Chairman, The National Association of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong.

"FEROCITY TRAINING"

Sunday Morning Post, Hong Kong - 28th November 1999 by CORTLAN BENNETT
http://www.scmp.com/
The tigers are fit and well-fed at the Xiongsheng Bear and Tiger Mountain Village in the scenic city of Guilin, Guangxi province. But their fate, both barbarous and illegal, wrenches the stomach.
For at this purported "endangered species sanctuary", 15 minutes' drive from the city that is one of China's most popular tourist destinations, the big cats are fed live domestic animals in a cheering coliseum of bloodthirsty onlookers - only to be served up themselves to Taiwanese and local tourists who wash the tiger meat down with tiger-bone and bear gall-bladder wine.
This spectacle is carried out under the guise of rehabilitating the park's more than 200 protected tigers for eventual release into the wild. The open sale of products of endangered tigers and bears, however, is purely for profit.
The events have outraged not only local and international animal rights organisations, but also the central Government, which has told the park three times in the past two weeks to cease its illegal sale of endangered species and brutal treatment of animals in its care.
The park came to the notice of Animals Asia Foundation executive director Jill Robinson, who works in both Hong Kong and Beijing to fight animal cruelty and who, by a strange twist, was invited to the park's opening in April last year. She later discovered the name of Animals Asia and its sponsor, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, being falsely used to promote the park and condone its activities.

The park is not the only one offering such shows. A Sunday Morning Post investigation in 1995 of Shenzhen Safari Park at Xili Lake found tigers being thrown live chickens by grinning visitors. After that practice was banned, fighting horse shows were introduced in 1997 to woo back lost audiences.

In June, Beijing drafted the Regulation for Nationwide Wildlife Parks. And after a visit last month to the Guilin park by Ms Robinson and Animals Asia project director Boris Chiao, she obtained a pledge this month from Zhang Jianlong, director of the Department of Wild Fauna and Flora Conservation in the State Forestry Administration, that live animal feeding had been stopped and the park would be further investigated.

Notified by the Post of the barbarity seen by reporters last Tuesday, she said: "It is an embarrassment not only to us and all our efforts to stop this cruel and illegal treatment of animals, but it is humiliating to the central Government which only last week declared it had put an end to the live feeding of animals as entertainment in such parks, and has shown great concern in going to lengths to stamp out the illegal trade in endangered species.

"What the park has continued to do - despite repeated warnings not to - is to breach international and Chinese regulations and direct central Government instructions. This is just a slap in the face to all concerned. We are very upset and still trying to understand how it can continue to get away with it."

Yet it does. Just an hour's flight from Hong Kong, Tiger Mountain, as the park is known, is off the main highway that links Guilin airport to the Guangxi provincial capital, Nanning. Though not shown on English maps, the park and its gruesome forms of "family entertainment" are openly touted on signboards and through local travel and tourist services within the city.
Ironically, the park has pictures of US President Bill Clinton when he was in Guilin last year, where he made an impassioned plea to save the environment.
Privately funded, the safari park claims to be "the largest base for science, breeding and wildlife of tigers and black bears in the world". Owner Zhou Weisen said his "team of breeding experts" aimed to produce 500 tigers by the millennium (numbers have already doubled from 100 to 200 in the past 18 months), while signs inside the park proclaim: "We are helping save endangered species."
In reality, this "scientific park" is a sacrificial circus where juvenile tigers and lions are trained by collar and leash to attack farm animals, then slaughtered once they have grown old or sick. Their meat is then served up in the park's restaurant, and their bones crushed and fermented into 500-yuan (HK$450) bottles of wine brewed and sold on the premises with an official export certificate.
This medieval cycle of life and death starts immediately visitors have paid their 80-yuan admission fee. Just beyond the turnstiles, they are greeted by the resident "fisherman". For 10 yuan, he will bait a bamboo fishing pole with a live chicken or duck and demonstrate how to dangle it head-first into a pit full of tigers. Pole-bearers jostle for position as children and onlookers squeal with delight at each tease and catch. The young tigers rip the chickens and ducks to shreds, fighting over every carcass.
But this is just a teaser for the main event. Twice each day, a loudspeaker announces the "wildness training" spectacle, and the eager crowds file past a pen full of suckling lion cubs and their surrogate lactating dog-mothers, to the grey coliseum on the other side of the park. Hungry tigers await.
Hungry tigers are not what you see first. A sign at the entrance warns against "children and those with weak hearts" entering as the live feeding "necessary to the tiger's survival in the wilderness . . . nevertheless contains a certain brutality". No-one stops to read. Inside the dank, cold concrete arena the tigers pace their cages below while the punters laugh and smoke and take their seats upstairs. A placid calf stands tethered to an iron gate, brown eyes impassive. It will have to wait its turn.
Dancing girls twirling boa constrictors add an air of frivolity to the start of the show. But this is not what people have paid to see, and when a small pig is dumped unceremoniously into the centre of the arena and the first juvenile tiger let out of its cage, there is expectant silence - then boos of disappointment as the cat ignores its prey, instead going straight to its
neighbouring felines in their cages. The pig makes the first move. With poignant naïveté and no hint of fear, it approaches the cat which suddenly turns, pounces and starts tearing at its neck.
The pig squeals and the spectre of death looms. But this is no death. The crowd cheers as the cat mauls and toys with its prey. It does not know how to kill, and indeed has no reason to do so: the pig is not going anywhere and the tiger is not particularly hungry, perhaps relishing its only chance to relieve the boredom of being locked up. It drags the still-squealing pig back into its cage to play with it.
The crowd shows its appreciation by laughing, spitting and dropping burning cigarette butts on the caged tigers below.
It is the calf's turn, and this time there is no hesitation. A big, lean, full-grown cat is let loose and goes straight for the throat. The young calf mews and cries, kicking at the tiger, struggling to remain on its feet, urinating and defecating across the concrete floor as the big cat subdues
its prey, then begins to tear its flesh, eating it alive as it bellows in agony.
A front-end loader suddenly disrupts the proceedings, entering the arena to chase the cat back into its cage. It scoops up first the pig, then the calf - both bleeding profusely but still alive - and removes them to an abattoir behind the main coliseum. Death comes at human hands via a blow to the head and a sharp knife to the throat. The carcasses are cut up and fed to the other cats.
Leaving the bloodied arena to the sound of laughter, visitors then approach one of the park's open enclosures. Inside are a number of albino Siberian tigers. A sign in Chinese and English describes them as "The White Tiger from North America, Japan and Australia".
A park official, asked where she understands the animals originate, answers helpfully: "These are from Australia. They cost 300 yuan each."
"There are no tigers in Australia. Except in zoos."
"Oh. Well you've probably never seen them there because they are white - they're very hard to see in the snow."
Next to the "Australian" tigers are the Bengals. Another sign says they are from "Bangladesh, Italy". The lack of knowledge brings into question the level of experience of the park's "experts", who told Ms Robinson during her visit last year that they had six south China tigers, four Bengal tigers, 60 Siberian tigers, 130 Asiatic black bears, one brown bear, 19 African lions, one clouded leopard and one golden cat.
Ms Robinson suspects that despite owner Mr Zhou's claim that the aim is to release the animals into the wild, they are wanted for a far more grisly end. One of the first things Ms Robinson and Mr Chiao discovered during their visit was the illegal sale of tiger wine.
"While the park claims it is breeding the tigers for eventual release, we haven't seen any evidence of this," Ms Robinson said. "All they've done is trained them to kill livestock and get used to human contact - a sure recipe for disaster in the wild. Yet there hasn't even been a nature reserve allocated to them. Certainly they are not being released into the wild and
some, I shudder to say, probably find their way into the bottom of a wine bottle."
She said that according to local villagers, three tigers a month were culled for such trade. A "museum" inside the park grounds doubles as a distillery and sales outlet for tiger-bone, bear bile and gall-bladder rice wines and other products. The tiger wine is sold in a black box labelled simply as "Restorative Bone Wine" for 500 yuan a bottle. Sales staff insist it is made
from tiger bones, though for legal reasons cannot be sold as such. Instead, doubtful buyers are led to a back room and shown earthenware wine pots containing tiger skulls to allay their disbelief. Each bottle comes with an official export certificate. If visitors prefer, they can try it by the glass in the park's restaurant which, according to Ms Robinson, also serves tiger-meat dishes.
Endangered black Asiatic bears are much sought after for the reputed tonic properties of their gall-bladders and bile. The park shows them in a motorcycle high-wire act, a mock "bear wedding" and a bicycle race in which baby black bears are whipped to the finish line Tiger Mountain's days may be numbered, but similar animal shows are unlikely to end with it. At least four similar parks are in operation on the mainland.

Click on a thumbnail to view the big picture:

                  

          
Photos by Animals Asia Foundation.

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