Court Sentences Chinese Man to 12 Years for Killing, Eating Endangered Tiger
A Chinese court has sentenced a man to 12 years in jail, plus a fine, for killing an endangered Indochinese tiger – which was made into a stew and eaten.
The Mengla county court in Xishuangbanna has sentenced Kang Wannian to 12 years in jail, plus a fine of over $14,642 USD, for killing an endangered Indochinese tiger in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
Kang claimed he did not know the animal he shot was a tiger.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Kang Wannian and Gao Zuqiao were allegedly hunting for frogs in the Xishuangbanna national nature reserve when the shooting occurred.
He shot to death what he claimed an “unspecified animal” after dark while in a hunt with Gao Zuqiao for a kind of frog in the Xishuangbanna national nature reserve in February. The two fled the scene after learning the animal was a tiger.
China Daily reported that Kang and his accomplice Gao, along with a group of villagers, dismembered the tiger’s body the next day and allegedly made a stew out of the tiger.
Kang’s wife and Gao asked five fellow villagers to the reserve the next day to dismember the tiger and take it home, where they stewed and ate it, the court heard.
Gao received four years of jail time and has been ordered to pay a 20,000 yuan fine. Three of the villagers were fined 10,000 yuan and given three years of jail (but with a reprieve of four years).
Kang was also ordered to pay 480,000 yuan for state economic losses and two guns were confiscated.
The Chinese market for illegal tiger products
Thanks to the insatiable Chinese demand for products derived from tigers, wild tigers now number fewer than 4,000 – a 95% percent decline in population since 1900.
Currently, there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that tiger parts or derivatives are effective remedies or medicines – yet China’s obsession with tiger parts has created a thriving poaching network and decimated the wild tiger population to just 4,000 today.
Many wildlife experts warn that 2010 Year of the Tiger – combined with China’s “new wealth” and increased purchasing power – will result in an unprecedented surge in tiger poaching and the extinction of wild tigers.
The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) population is around 300.
Related articles about the illegal trade in tiger parts and China:
- Breeding Tigers for Commercial Trade in Body Parts; World Bank Says No Way, Calls for Ban on Tiger Farming
- China Tells Kathmandu It Supplies Other Countries with ‘Medicine’ Produced from Tiger Farms
- Tiger Extinction Would Be China’s Fault
- Tiger Protection Plan in India ‘Failing’; China Ambivalent About Tiger Poaching
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Thank God !? that these dark-age superstitions are not shared by the government. There is hope !
I agree with what someone was saying about China’s “new wealth” and the danger that this poses to wildlife. The government will have to get its skates on if much is to survive The Year of the Tiger, let alone the 21st century.