Wildlife A Bitter Pill to Swallow: China’s flagrant trade in leopard bone products April 2020 Wildlife ©EIAimage We would like to thank ABOUT EIA EIA UK 62-63 Upper Street, Ximporae.EIA would Utlike aut to fugitisthank restithe ut atia We investigate and campaign against London N1 0NY UK nobitfollowing ium foralici their bla conesupport: consequam Network environmental crime and abuse. T: +44 (0) 20 7354 7960 cusfor Social aci oditaquates Change, Ernest dolorem Kleinwort volla Our undercover investigations E: [email protected] vendam,Charitable consequo Trust and molor The sinRufford net expose transnational wildlife crime, eia-international.org fugitatur,Foundation. qui int que nihic tem with a focus on elephants and asped quei oditaquates dolorem tigers, and forest crimes such as volla vendam, conseqci oditaquates EIA US illegal logging and deforestation for dolorem volla vendam, consequo PO Box 53343 cash crops like palm oil. 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Registered in England and Wales 2 Environmental Investigation Agency ©EIAimage CONTENTS Above: Leopards have been lost Introduction 4 from 85 per cent of their Asian range with poaching for trade in Background 6 their parts a primary threat Methodology 8 Legitimising consumption: how Government policy permits leopard bone trade 9 Connecting the dots: leopard bone products and Government permits 10 The tip of the iceberg? Permits to trade in protected wildlife issued since 2017 15 Potential for contributing to illegal international trade 16 CITES Parties urge closure of domestic markets for Asian big cats 17 Recommendations 18 Appendix I 19 Appendix II 22 References 23 BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW 3 Introduction Asia’s leopards (Panthera pardus) are in danger of quietly slipping into extinction, with illegal killing to meet demand for their body parts a key driver of their rapid decline. Yet authorities in China – the main source of demand for leopard parts – continue to allow legal commercial trade in traditional medicine products containing leopard bone, which are apparently exempt from wildlife trade bans adopted in the wake of coronavirus COVID-19. In this report, EIA names 24 Chinese companies which appear to be producing and selling products listing leopard bone as an ingredient. It is a measure of the severity of the While decisions adopted by the National current biodiversity crisis that the People’s Congress Standing Committee in leopard, that most adaptable of big cats, February 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 has disappeared from approximately 85 outbreak have restricted trade in wildlife per cent of its Asian range.1 The figures as food, trade for other purposes such for several Asian subspecies are even as traditional medicine and ornamental more stark: Indochinese leopards are now items is still permitted, including for absent from 94 per cent of their historical protected species. range, extinct or functionally extinct in Laos, Vietnam and Singapore, and almost As China’s own leopard population has extinct in Cambodia and China.2 In China been pushed to near extinction, leopards as a whole, the total population of leopards elsewhere in Asia have been targeted across the country was estimated in 2015 for their body parts. Of a minimum 5,332 to be fewer than 450 individuals.3 Asian leopards that have been seized from illegal trade since 20004, 4,151 were 5 A major factor in the leopard’s continuing seized in India – approximately five-and- ©EIAimage decline throughout Asia is illegal killing a-half times the number of tigers seized for trade in their body parts. Demand in the country during the same period. for their bones, primarily from Chinese These figures comprise seizures of whole ©EIAimage consumers, is one of the drivers of this leopards, as represented by whole skins, trade. Leopard bone is consumed in carcasses, taxidermy specimens or live similar ways to tiger bone, steeped in rice animals; seizures of bone or skeletons are wine to produce health tonics and used in omitted to avoid possible double counting. the production of traditional medicines. As much illegal trade goes undetected or unreported, the true number of leopards in Leopard bone has a long history as an trade is likely far higher. ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and, in addition since a 1993 State Moreover, the number of leopard skins Council Notification (repealed in 2018) seized far exceeds the number of animals banning use of tiger bone and rhino horn represented by seizures of bone. For in medicines, leopard bone has been example, between 2014-18, at least 516 widely used in formulations similar to leopard skins were seized in Asia.6 Based those which would traditionally have on NGO and media reports, EIA was able contained tiger bone. Based on testimony to quantify the seizure of only 250.9kg from individuals engaged in illegal of leopard bone in Asia during the same trade, consumers in China also illegally period – equivalent to the bones of purchase leopard bone that has been sold approximately 32 individual leopards.7 to them as tiger. While this figure is a minimum (with, for example, additional media reports of 4 Environmental Investigation Agency seizure incidents indicating leopard bone Despite the long-standing international was seized without stating a weight), trade ban and a domestic ban on hunting this indicates that reported quantities the few wild leopards remaining in China of leopard bone alone seized from illegal – and thus a lack of any replenishable trade are not an adequate indicator of the legal source – Chinese authorities scale of trafficking. continue to permit large-scale commercial trade in leopard bone products. Snow leopards and clouded leopards – both listed as Vulnerable in the IUCN The existence of a parallel legal market in Red List – are also seriously threatened leopard bone serves to remove the stigma by trade in their body parts. A minimum of consumption and to legitimise use, of 301 snow leopards and 117 clouded while also complicating law enforcement leopards have been seized from illegal efforts. Moreover, there is a total lack of trade since 2000,8 although other transparency from Government agencies estimates of the scale of snow leopard regarding quantities and provenance trade9 and the visibility of clouded of leopard bone in stockpiles. This, set leopards in markets in South-East Asia10 against a backdrop of rampant poaching suggest the true scale of killing for their and trafficking of leopards across Asia body parts is far greater. The term used for with comparatively little leopard bone ‘leopard bone’ in TCM (豹骨 / bao [leopard] being seized from trade, raises the gu [bone]) is ambiguous, as the generic serious possibility that some of the character for leopard – 豹 (bao) – could bone in China’s legal trade is derived be used to refer to leopard, snow leopard, from animals illegally killed outside clouded leopard or even other species China and smuggled into the country in such as jaguar (which translates literally contravention of CITES. as “American leopard”). The TCM term “bao gu” is sometimes translated into Latin as While the majority of TCM practitioners “Os pardi” on product labelling, this being do not use the body parts of threatened a non-scientific term used by the industry wildlife such as leopards, the actions of which has no taxonomic meaning. the companies detailed in this report, as well as the decision-makers who have In recognition of the threat posed to continued to permit the use of leopard these species by commercial trade, the bone, are serving to both exacerbate leopard, snow leopard and clouded leopard threats to Asia’s imperilled big cats and were included on the very first version tarnish the image of traditional Chinese of Appendix I of the Convention on medicine as a whole. International Trade in Endangered Species Top left to right: Snow leopard and clouded leopard. of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) when the Both species are threatened by trade in their body parts. Convention was adopted in 1975, banning The ambiguous term for leopard bone “Os pardi” used in traditional Chinese medicine is applied to the bones of international trade in the species or their leopards, snow leopards or clouded leopards parts and derivatives for commercial purposes. Left: Leopard skulls and bones offered illegally for sale in China BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW 5 Background The use of leopard bone in packaged TCM products in China has been reported During the course of research on Down since at least 1994,11 while in 2007 China to the Bone, EIA identified at least 31 first reported to CITES that Government manufacturers which were advertising regulations issued in March 2006 stated a total of 36 products on their websites, that “only existing stock of leopard for which the ingredients list explicitly bones could be used” by pharmaceutical included “leopard bone” [bao gu]. Revisiting manufacturers.12 Quantities of leopard this research in 2019, several of these bone held in such stockpiles and the websites appeared to have gone offline.