Did China Just Sign the Death Warrant for Indonesia's Tigers and Rhinos? (2024)

What if you could ace your next test with some monkey brains? Or “upgrade” your willpower with a shot of tiger’s blood? Have a better sex life with some of the tiger’s penis? In our crazy world, where thing’s rarely make sense anymore, quick fixes like these are still insanely popular across Southeast and East Asia, where a thriving black market in illegal animal parts has, for years, resisted crackdowns and pressure from conservationist groups.

Now, efforts to curb the trade in endangered animal parts hit another setback, this time from its biggest market—China. The Chinese government recently overturned a 25-year-old ban on the sale of tiger and rhino bones, opening the door to the use of endangered animal parts under “special circ*mstances,” like medical and pharmaceutical use.

Green groups were quick to slam the decision, warning that it would only hurt efforts to save creatures that are, today, critically endangered. There are less than 4,000 tigers left in the wild in Asia. In Indonesia, where only one species of native tiger still exists, there are only 400 of them left. Asian rhinos are in an even worse position, with around 3,500 left in total, and less than 70 of some species like the Javan rhino.

There’s now a very real concern that legalization in China is going to reduce those numbers even further.

“China’s decision is as backwards as it is shocking,” said Sunarto, a tiger specialist at WWF Indonesia. “The ban didn’t stop poaching, no. But it made it a little easier for us to supervise potential poachers. Now, it’s going to get worse.”

Chinese officials say that all tiger bones will be taken from tigers raised in captivity, but Sunarto believes that the mere presence of a legal marketplace for endangered animal products makes it more difficult to track and police black market sales.

“China has a tiger farm to meet their demand, but this encourages people to keep buying products derived from endangered animals,” he explained. “And, people prefer wild Tigers. It’s cheaper anyway [to kill a wild tiger] than [it is] to raise a cub.”

It seems like a lot to put such a focus on China, but the country is so big, and the market for products made from rare and endangered animals so massive, that a lot of experts argue that our ability to save these animals depends entirely on efforts to reduce the demand in China.

As many as 1,000 South African rhinos were killed in a single year to meet demand in China, according a study by Save the Rhino. In Asian countries, where there are already far fewer rhinoceros than there are in Africa, it can be hard to get a real handle on how many are poached each year because it’s hard to even figure out how many are actually left alive, Sunarto explained.

“It’s difficult to get an accurate number,” he said. “I mean, even wild spottings are becoming rarer by each day. But based on our estimation, there too are 60 Javanese rhinos left, and we have no idea for Sumatran rhinos. But it’s definitely less than 100.”

You need at least 500 of a species to have what conservations call a “healthy population,” he explained. With so few rhinos and tigers left in Indonesia, any increase in poaching could be enough to knock the species off the map entirely.

Illegal poaching brings in an estimated $213 billion USD a year, globally. Conservations efforts, by comparison, are significantly underfunded in Indonesia. During a visit to one national park in Sumatra a few years back, a VICE staffer learned that the animal protection officers were making their own bullets by harvesting powder from fireworks.

“Keeping track of illegal poachers was already difficult,” Sunarto said. “This makes everything even worse.”