Forestry authorities have pledged to maintain the 14-year-old ban on trade in all tiger derivatives despite intense lobbying from commercial groups to lift the ban.

Liu Xiongying, spokesman for the State Forestry Administration (SFA), said the government remains committed to the policy, introduced in 1993 to wipe out the market for traditional medicines made from tigers.

"China will strengthen the crackdown on illegal trade of tiger parts and forge cooperation with other countries to protect tiger habitats," Liu told China Daily.

Liu was responding to a recent report that some businesses have been lobbying the government to allow domestic trade of captive-bred tiger parts for use in traditional medicine and their skins for clothing.

"Any lifting of the ban would lead to an increase in demand for these products, which in turn would result in more poaching of wild tiger populations," said Steven Broad, executive director of the Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC), the wildlife trade monitoring network that compiled the report.

"The resumption of this trade would be highly damaging to China's wild tiger conservation efforts and the international reputation of the country."

The report said the ban has virtually eliminated the domestic market for tiger products in traditional medicines.

"In the early 1990s, we feared that Chinese demand for tiger parts would drive the tiger to extinction by the new millennium," said Broad.

"The tiger survives today thanks in large part to China's prompt, strict and committed action."

Enforcement measures range from promotion of effective substitutes for tiger medicines to severe punishment for law-breakers.

Globally, about 7,000 tigers live in the wild; and around 9,000 are raised in farms, of which 4,000 are in China.

Source: China Daily