11 Siberian tigers starved to death after assult on keeper at China zoo

BEIJING: Keepers of a zoo in China have practiced a variation of the "badla" theme of Bollywood over several months. They have managed to starve 11 tigers to death and shot down two others after a big cat attacked one of the staff members last year.

Wild life experts have been asking China to end excess in-house breeding of tigers because animal handlers either do not enough training or financial capability to feed them. But the government in China, which is celebrating the year of the tiger, is refusing to accept the criticism.

Yin Hong, deputy director of the state forestry administration, has said the slide in the population of wild tigers is not related to farm breeding.

"The fast disappearing natural habitat and cross-border illegal trade are major causes (for shrinking wild tiger population), rather than the farms," he said. Yin said the government is helpless about breeding farms because they were established before the ban of tiger products was enforced.

At least 11 Siberian tigers have died for want of food at the Shenyang Forest Wild Life Zoo, a private enterprise in northeast China's Liaoning province, the China News Agency quoted Liu Xiaoqiang, a local wildlife protection official, as saying.

"For each day, the tigers get only one or two chickens. Even that stingy meat won't come now; some have starved for two days already," said Liu Xiaoqiang, a local wildlife protection official.

Food supply at the Shenyang Forest Wild Life Zoo, a private enterprise in northeast China's Liaoning province, was not enough for over 30 tigers kept in narrow confines. This resulted in heart and renal failures, hemorrhagic enteritis and myocarditis, reports said.

Keepers also shot dead two other Siberian tigers after they assaulted the feeder last November.

China has 6,500 tigers bred in 12 farms besides dozens kept in private and publicly run zoos. Environmentalists have repeatedly complained that the market for tiger products is expanding and it is difficult to distinguish which of them come from farm bred animals and those poached from forests.