Hidden in Plain Sight: China’s Clandestine Tiger Trade is a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency “revealing how, despite signing up to global initiatives seeking to protect wild tigers and double their number by 2022, Government departments in China have quietly set about stimulating domestic markets for tiger skins and body parts.”
Tiger farming is a subject which has haunted me daily, often hourly, in the year I’ve been aware of the practice. Only recently, however, have I deliberately set myself to engaging with the data in a responsible way; Hidden in Plain Sight (available above), as well as other articles and videos by the EIA, have been indispensable for this. Likewise has author J.A. Mills’ Blood of the Tiger: A Story of Conspiracy, Greed, and the Battle to Save a Magnificent Species.
If you can spare the time, take advantage of these resources and others like them to further inform yourself about this horrific trade—and take action against it. Wild tiger populations are being mercilessly destroyed not only in China, but internationally, to support it. If not killed on-sight for their skins, these tigers are trapped and held captive in nauseatingly, unconscionably cruel conditions. I would call the lives they live out in these farms “worse than death”, but the terrible truth is that, for them, there is no such distinction.