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Thread: WildAid Tiger Claw Champion

  1. #91
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    The 2016 WildAid Tiger Claw Champion is Li Yujie

    Gene Ching
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  2. #92
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    Beat me to the punch, PalmStriker

    Forgive the merge, but we do already have this thread going. I'm copying this to our WildAid-Tiger-Claw-Champion thread too, just to ttt that one.

    Thu Jun 2, 2016 6:35am EDT Related: ENVIRONMENT, THAILAND
    Three monks charged in Thailand as tiger potions, charms point to illicit trade
    BANGKOK | BY PATPICHA TANAKASEMPIPAT


    A Buddhist monk walks past a tiger before officials start moving them from Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple, a popular tourist destination which has come under fire in recent years over the welfare of its big cats in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, Thailand, May...
    REUTERS/CHAIWAT SUBPRASOM

    Thai authorities charged three Buddhist monks on Thursday after they were caught trying to smuggle tiger skins and charms made from tiger parts out a temple which monks said was a tiger sanctuary but critics said was a money-spinning tourist trap.

    The Buddhist temple west of Bangkok has long been popular with tourists who paid about $20 each to get in and pose for pictures with its tigers, and to feed cubs and walk among them.

    But the temple had come under mounting allegations of abuse and illicit wildlife trafficking and authorities armed with a court order raided it on Monday to confiscate the 137 tigers found there and take them to a government wildlife sanctuary.

    The discovery on Thursday of the tiger skins and charms, or amulets, made from skins in a pick-up truck, and jars containing the bodies of tiger cubs in the temple, pointed to an even more lucrative business than thought.

    "The jars have labels, so I think they've made medicine here," said Adisorn Nuchdamrong, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, who has been overseeing the raid to remove the temple's tigers and search its premises.

    Authorities found 20 glass jars containing baby tigers and tiger organs in a "laboratory" in the temple, reinforcing suspicion it was making folk medicine, he said.

    Tiger parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine, a multi-million dollar business that has driven tigers in the wild to the brink of extinction and fueled the rearing of tigers in parts of Asia, especially in China.

    "We will discover more as we search on," Adisorn told Reuters.

    Two temple devotees and a monk found in the pick-up truck, and two monks who helped load it, were charged under wildlife laws, Adisorn said.

    Representatives of the temple were not available for comment.

    The confiscation of the tiger products followed the discovery on Wednesday of 40 dead tiger cubs in a freezer.

    Wildlife officials suspect the cubs were being preserved for use in potions.

    Thailand is well known as a hub for illicit trafficking of wildlife products, including ivory.

    Activists had for years criticized the temple and urged tourists to shun it, and complained that wildlife protection laws were poorly enforced.

    The Department of National Parks had removed 84 out of the 137 tigers found at the temple by Thursday.

    Workers have been using tranquilizer darts to sedate the animals before lifting them into cages and on to trucks for the journey to the government sanctuary.

    (Additional reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)
    Wonder what our freelance contributor Dax Howard has to say about this. He wrote Hit Tiger: No really, go hit that tiger in our MAY+JUNE 2015 issue which discussed when he worked at the Tiger Temple.
    Gene Ching
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  3. #93
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    Dax commented on his facebook feed

    Dax also posted this...and more.

    Forty dead tiger cubs found in freezer at Thai temple
    Officials have removed 61 live tigers from Tiger Temple in ongoing operation after allegations of wildlife trafficking


    Adisorn Noochdumrong, the deputy director general of the Department of National Parks, stands by the carcasses of 40 tiger cubs and a bearcat found at the Tiger Temple. Photograph: Dario Pignatelli/Getty Images

    Oliver Holmes in Bangkok and John Vidal
    Wednesday 1 June 2016 08.36 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 1 June 2016 17.00 EDT

    Wildlife authorities in Thailand have found 40 tiger cubs in a freezer during a police raid on Tiger Temple, a tourist attraction that has faced repeated allegations of animal trafficking.

    The discovery occurred after officials from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP), backed by police, closed the temple this week to relocate 137 tigers to government-run sanctuaries.

    “International pressure concerning illegal wildlife trafficking is also part of why we’re acting now,” said Adisorn Noochdumrong, DNP deputy director general, who said that the cubs’ carcasses were found in a kitchen area.

    “They must be of some value for the temple to keep them. But for what is beyond me,” he told Reuters.

    The cubs, some of them bloodied and mangled, were laid out on the floor along with other animals, including a binturong, a small rare species also known as a bearcat.

    Promoting itself as a spiritual sanctuary for humans and animals, Tiger Temple has been keeping the big cats and other animals for 15 years. It charges tourists to take photos of themselves stroking adult tigers and bottle-feeding cubs.

    The tigers are cared for by staff and volunteers. Monks reside at the Buddhist temple, west of Bangkok in Kanchanaburi province.

    Wildlife authorities have removed 61 animals so far and vowed to close the temple for good. The site has been accused of illegally breeding tigers and some visitors say the animals appear to be drugged. A handler was recently filmed smacking a tiger on the head.

    The temple denies accusations of abuse and trafficking and other visitors have lauded the conditions and the care taken over the animals.

    The raid is the culmination of a battle that has been going on for years between the government and the temple, which says the tigers will be worse off in the care of the DNP.

    Responding to requests for comment, the temple said on its Facebook page that a vet had requested the cubs be frozen and preserved six years ago. “He made that decision probably to keep as proof against the allegations of selling cubs,” the temple said.

    It added that Thai authorities were “fully aware” the cubs were being kept frozen. The temple pointed to a post dated 4 March that directly referred to the preserved cubs.

    “In 2010, the ex-vet of Tiger Temple changed [the] policy. Instead of cremation, the deceased cubs were preserved in jars or kept frozen. We have documented all the deaths from 2010 and have photographic evidence of them still being within the temple,” it added.

    Thailand is a central route for illicit wildlife trade through south-east Asia, including ivory and rhino horn. Tiger parts, including bone and *****, are used in traditional Chinese medicine. Raids often find the tigers cut in half with their organs preserved on ice.

    The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species banned the trade in tiger parts and products in 2007.

    Two weeks ago, a 26-year-old man from the central province of Ha Tinh in Vietnam was found with four frozen tiger cubs at the border of Laos. He said he had bought the carcasses from a Laotian at a border market for 2 million Vietnamese Dong (£62). He was caught while delivering them to the buyer.

    The move to shut down the temple has been widely praised by animal rights groups.

    “The Tiger Temple has been involved in the illegal trade for years and animal and conservation groups have long tried to have it closed,” said Debbie Banks, campaigner on tigers and wildlife crime at the Environmental Investigation Agency in London.

    The charity People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said this week that the temple was “hell for animals” and called on tourists to stop visiting any animal attractions.

    The WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund For Nature) also commended the DNP for the raid.

    “This week’s actions to remove the tigers from the Tiger Temple are long overdue and we strongly encourage the Department of National Parks to make the removal of the tigers permanent,” said Yowalak Thiarachow, country director of WWF-Thailand.

    “The Tiger Temple has been posing as a sanctuary for tigers while secretly acting as a tiger farm and selling tigers and tiger parts on the black market for an enormous profit,” he added.

    Thailand has an estimated 1,200-1,300 captive tigers in at least 33 facilities, he said.
    Gene Ching
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  4. #94
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    KFTC day 2016: Ian Lim WildAid Kid Tiger Champion

    Gene Ching
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    Less Meat, Less Heat: Behind the Scenes with James Cameron & Arnold Schwarzenegger

    Gene Ching
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  6. #96
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    The fight goes on

    China accused of defying its own ban on breeding tigers to profit from body parts

    Beijing faces pressure at global summit to close 200 farms where tigers are bred for luxury goods and end its obstructive tactics


    A tiger farm in southern Binh Duong province, Vietnam. China is believed to have about 200 licensed tiger farms, in contravention of its own ban on the trade. Photograph: Mike Ives/AP

    Nick Davies and Oliver Holmes
    Tuesday 27 September 2016 07.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 27 September 2016 07.02 EDT

    China has been accused of deceiving the international community by allowing a network of farms to breed thousands of captive tigers for the sale of their body parts, in breach of their own longstanding ban on the trade.

    The Chinese government has allowed about 200 specialist farms to hold an estimated 6,000 tigers for slaughter, before their skins are sold as decoration and their bones are marinated to produce tonics and lotions. Campaigners say this has increased demand for the products and provoked the poaching of thousands of wild tigers, whose global population is now down to just 3,500.

    China is expected to come under pressure at this week’s Johannesburg conference of nations who have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). The Guardian has found that Chinese delegates have tried to obstruct debate at the conference by rewriting a critical report and questioning the wording of a key decision.

    The Chinese say their domestic market is nobody else’s business since Cites covers only international trade. They also point out that by breeding 6,000 tigers in captivity they have significantly increased the population of the species, and question why western countries should be allowed to breed cattle and pigs for their own markets if they are to be criticised for doing so with tigers.

    Rows of tiger cages at the Xiongsen bear and tiger farm in Guilin, China. Photograph: Sinopix/Rex

    The argument gets to the heart of the debate about whether endangered species have an inherent right to exist in their own habitat, or should be allowed to survive only if they have some commercial value – “if it pays, it stays”. Some poorer nations are pushing hard for a legal right to kill and trade the parts of elephants, rhinos and tigers.

    China’s State Council introduced its tiger breeding ban in May 1993 under intense pressure, with the Clinton administration in the US and Cites separately threatening trade sanctions. They closed down 200 factories that had been producing wine from marinated tiger bones. Chinese delegates told a subsequent Cites meeting that it had “banned all internal trade in tiger parts.”

    Yet, four months later, China’s State Forestry Administration (SFA), which was responsible for enforcing the ban, approved the opening of the first tiger farm and even invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in its operation before going on to open up a network of similar farms, now estimated by NGOs to number 200.

    John Sellar, then a law enforcement officer for Cites, later found that almost every part of the tiger’s body was being linked to some spurious medical benefit: the whiskers to deal with toothache; the eyeballs for malaria and epilepsy; the brain to cure laziness; the nose for childhood convulsions; the fat for haemorrhoids; the collar bone for good luck; the ***** for sexual energy; the tail for skin cancer; the feet placed outside a house to frighten bad spirits. And, beyond traditional medicine, the skin had become a prestigious wall hanging for China’s new, wealthy elite.


    A picture made available by the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic shows a tiger skin openly on sale at a retail outlet in Mong La, Myanmar. Photograph: Adam Oswell/EPA/Traffic

    In 2003, China marked the tenth anniversary of the ban by introducing a new sticker system for licensed animal products that were authorised for sale. A decade later, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) discovered that, having opened the farms, the SFA had been quietly issuing licences for the sale of skins from the tigers that were bred there. The SFA claimed that the skins were only sold to museums and universities for scientific purposes, but the EIA found at least half ended up in the plush apartments of China’s elite.

    Facing exposure, the Chinese disclosed that the wording of the State Council’s 1993 ban had been much narrower than its public statements had suggested, and that it applied only to trade in products produced from tiger bones, primarily wine. But, as animal rights campaigners dug deeper, it soon became clear that the SFA were also licensing the sale of tiger bone products. And the profits were huge. The wildlife-tracking NGO Traffic found tiger bone wine selling at $257 for 500ml, while another group, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), found one farm alone had a cellar full of vats containing 1.2 million litres, worth an estimated $617m. Wine from marinated tiger ***** was even more expensive, at $490 per 500ml. Meat was being sold at $100 a dish; teeth at $660 each; and whole skins for up to $22,000.

    Inspired by China’s behaviour, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos also opened tiger farms, some of which were suspected to be not only breeding animals for body parts but also “laundering” wild tigers that had been captured. Wild tigers are close to extinction in Vietnam and possibly already extinct in Laos. China is believed to have only 50.

    The issue came to a head in June 2007 at a conference at The Hague. Cites formally made a collective decision– numbered 14.69 – to go beyond its international remit, stating baldly that “tigers should not be bred for trade in their parts” and calling for all tiger farms to cut back their stock to the minimum needed for conservation of the species. Chinese delegates protested loudly that 14.69 was an intrusion in their domestic affairs, argued with the wording and formally noted their objection.

    Meanwhile, staff at the Beijing office of IFAW, which had been particularly vocal, became aware of men ostentatiously following them in the street, and the director’s driver reported that some of the men had approached him and asked for detailed reports on the director’s activity.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
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  7. #97
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    Continued from previous post


    Activists march on the Cites conference in Sandton, Johannesburg, last Saturday. Photograph: Denis Farrell/AP

    Minutes from Cites meetings show that since 14.69 was adopted, China has repeatedly quarrelled with its wording; claimed that the decision was not made by consensus; and consistently failed to produce information demanded by Cites about its tiger farms. When 13 heads of government met for the Global Tiger Initiative in St Petersburg in November 2010, the then Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, called for an end to the tiger trade, yet his delegates joined with those from Thailand, Vietnam and Laos to ensure that the meeting’s final declaration was worded to allow their farms to continue trading.

    The effect has been devastating. An analysis by the EIA found that in the 12 years from 2000, law enforcement agencies seized 1,031 tiger carcasses or skins – 90% of which were en route to China. Working on the standard police estimate that just 10% of illicit trade is seized, then somewhere in the region of 10,000 tigers were killed primarily for China’s consumers in this period.

    In the buildup to this month’s Cites conference in Johannesburg – and in spite of its track record – China took over the chairmanship of the working group on big cats, and used its position to water down the findings of a report that Cites had commissioned from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

    The report, seen by the Guardian, embarrassed China by finding that they had “systematically exercised internal trading privileges for companies dealing in big cat skins and derivatives, produced mainly from captive breeding”. But the Chinese draft stated: “It appears that significant progress has been made by some parties in implementing legislative and regulatory measures to restrict trade in Asian big cat specimens.”


    ‘Liger’ cubs - a cross between a lion and a tiger. Photograph: Gary Roberts/Rex

    While the IUCN had called for urgent action to deal with “the growing use of tiger parts and derivatives as luxury items”, the Chinese draft reported that “the evidences and informations are not enough to demonstrate the growing use of parts and derivatives of Asian big cats as luxury items.”

    The IUCN report noted that there was no evidence of China having restricted the sale of tiger products to scientific and educational outlets, as they had always claimed; that NGOs had found tiger wine on sale; and that there was some evidence that stockpiles of tiger bone were leaking on to the market. In spite of this and the work of other NGOs, the Chinese draft claimed there had been “no systematic and comprehensive investigation”.

    Chinese delegates went on to claim that there had never been a consensus to pass 14.69 in 2007; that there was doubt about the definitions of “trade” and “internal trade”; and that Cites had merely “urged”, not “ordered”, Chinato destroy its stockpiles of tiger bone.

    This was poorly received by other members of the big cats working group, and an alliance of the US, the UK and India succeeded in rewriting the draft. The argument is expected to continue in Johannesburg this week.

    Meanwhile, in Harbin, north-east China, one of the biggest tiger farms has found a new loophole in the law by cross-breeding tigers with lions. The Chinese say that the sale of “liger” bones is not covered by the 1993 ban.
    Not to make light of this horrible situation but Ligers always remind me of Napoleon Dynamite now.
    "It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic."
    Gene Ching
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  8. #98
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    The 2017 WildAid Tiger Claw Championship

    The 2017 WildAid Tiger Claw Championships will be held on Sunday of the Kung Fu Tai Chi 25th Anniversary Festival, May 19-21, 2017 in San Jose, California.
    Gene Ching
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  9. #99
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    WildAid Tiger Claw Champions Showcase at Grandmasters LIVE!



    Tickets are now on sale for the KUNG FU TAI CHI 25th Anniversary Festival Grandmasters LIVE! May 19 2017 at the California Theater in San Jose, CA.
    Gene Ching
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  10. #100
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    The 2017 WildAid Tiger Claw Championship: 5/21/2017

    Gene Ching
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  11. #101
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    KFTC Day 2017: WildAid Champion, Shengwei Cheng

    Gene Ching
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  12. #102
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    KFTC Day 2017: Brandon Cheng, Teen Tiger

    Gene Ching
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  13. #103
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    Kung Fu Tai Chi Day: WILDAid Tiger Cub Max Lwin

    Gene Ching
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  14. #104
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    KFTC Day 2017: Samson Lee, WILDAid Runner-up

    Gene Ching
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  15. #105
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    WildAid Tiger Claw Champions 2017



    WildAid Tiger Claw Champion Shengwei Cheng & WildAid Tiger Cub Champion Max Lwin.
    Gene Ching
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