Tigers and trade.

The U.S. government has announced limited trade sanctions against Taiwan for its continued trafficking in products made from endangered species, particularly tigers and rhinoceros.

The unprecedented move--never before has the United States levelled trade sanctions in the name of environmental protection--was an encouraging development to animal conservation activists who were disappointed by the March decision of a United Nations conference to stop short of recommending sanctions against Taiwan, China, and South Korea for illegal trade of endangered species. Despite evidence that the three countries continue to traffick in tiger bones and rhino horns, the standing committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species said that all three had made progress toward wiping out the illegal practices, and ordered each to submit progress reports at a CITES conference scheduled for November.

In September, the CITES standing committee had warned the three Far Eastern countries that if their trade in tiger bones, rhino horns, and other products of endangered species did not stop, it would recommend that its member countries level economic sanctions against the offenders. Non-governmental organizations say there is convincing evidence that illegal trade continues, including customs records from South Korea showing that China exported 1.5 tons of tiger bone--the equivalent of more than 200 tigers, according to wildlife experts--to South Korea between June and September 1993 in clear violation of CITES. NGOs who appeared before the committee in March to recommend tough reprisals likened the CITES action to a slap on the hand.

However, the committee's harsher evaluation of Taiwan "left the door open" for U.S. President Bill Clinton to suggest trade sanctions, says one activist. The Pelly Amendment to the U.S. Fishermen's Protective Act of 1967 gives the president the power to prohibit imports of natural resource products from countries that fail to enforce international wildlife agreements; in the past, just the threat of sanctions under the Pelly Amendment has been instrumental in spurring change. Like the CITES committee, U.S. officials have said that they did not recommend sanctions against China because officials there had taken concrete steps toward policing illegal wildlife trade. They have denied charges from many observers that they were reluctant to risk further straining relations with China.

Environment and trade experts are watching closely to see how the U.S.-Taiwan drama plays out. The sanctions ban all imports of wildlife products from Taiwan, a move that is largely symbolic, since the economic impact will be relatively low. Nevertheless, some environmentalists speculate that Taiwan may appeal the sanctions through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. If so, the case could prove to be an important precedent as trade experts debate the legitimacy of using economic sanctions in international environmental conflicts.

Trade in tiger products (including skins and bones) and rhino horns is a particularly sensitive issue because of the precarious status of the world's tiger and rhino populations. Demand for these animal parts is high because of the widespread belief in the Far East that they nave medicinal properties, and because of widely promoted but unsubstantiated claims that some tiger and rhino parts are potent aphrodisiacs. Only an estimated 4,600 to 7,700 tigers remain in the wild, more than half of those in India, and three of the original eight sub-species are believed to be extinct. And the number of rhinos has dropped 90 percent in the last two decades alone.

In early March, prior to the CITES decision, senior officials from 12 Asian states met in New Delhi and agreed to set up a Global Forum of Tiger Range States that would pool the countries' efforts to save the tiger from extinction.

"The importance of the tiger is crucial, as it occupies the apex in the natural ecosystem," UNEP Executive Director Elizabeth Dowdeswell told the officials gathered in New Delhi. "The tiger is a terminal consumer in the ecological food web. A strategy that will save the tiger will also resurrect all the lower levels of the food chain--thereby restoring the biological diversity and the ecological balance in the fragile and highly complex ecosystems that constitute . . . the tiger habitat.

"The destruction of the tiger in effect threatens the entire natural cycle."