Demand for Wildlife Products on the Rise in China

The Chinese want them for exotic foods and for medicine.

From the China Daily...

The trade in TCM {Traditional Chinese Medicine} products has also been growing at an annual rate of 10 percent, which has seriously impacted medicinal plant and animal populations, though more than half of plants and animals being used by TCM are from artificial propagation or captive breeding. Up to 20 percent of these are now considered threatened.

Eating wild animals is also a traditional practice in southern China. The consumption of wild animals, which slowed amid the SARS epidemic in 2003, has once again gained popularity, a WWF survey has found.

Profit from illegal trade can be up to 10 times the cost, with restaurant operators offering the exotic dishes usually aware of the violation but lured by the gains, Xu {Hongfa, director of the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) TRAFFIC East Asia China Program} said.

Illegal trade in tiger meat and bones is also alive, continuing to threaten the extinction of an already depleted species, he said.