The underlying causes for a species becoming endangered can be broadly grouped into two catergories: (1) Over-hunting, and (2) Loss of habitat.

Proposed solutions to the overhunting part of this problem have included (1) efforts to impose a total ban on trade of certain animal products (e.g. ivory, or (2) sustainable trade.

An article in Guardian Unlimited recently indicates that in Xiongsen, China, tiger carcasses are being kept in storage as Beijing looks to lift ban on sale of exotic animal parts. The report indicates that Xiongsen is the world's biggest battery farm for rare animals. It reportedly holds 1,300 tigers - almost as many as the whole of India - as well as hundreds of bears, lions and birds.

The stock is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in China, where consumers pay high prices for remedies, tonics and aphrodisiacs made from rare species. But until now the park has only been able to bank its assets in cold storage because of a ban on tiger products.

All that could be about to change. After a decade of lobbying by Xiongsen, China is preparing to call for a lifting of the ban. Next week it will send its first ever delegation to the Global Tiger Forum in Kathmandu. In June, at a conference in the Hague of signatories to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), it is expected to push the issue. In a paper to Cites, China says the global ban has failed to halt the decline of the wild tiger population, despite a cost of £2bn to the Chinese economy and damage to China's traditions and medicinal culture.

Conservation groups warn that relaxing the ban could be disastrous. According to the World Wildlife Fund there are only 3,500 tigers left in the wild, compared with more than 6,000 in captivity. "This move could mean the end of wild tigers for China and could mean the extinction of many other tiger populations in Asia," said Grace Gabriel, Asian regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

In China the transformation of this jungle predator into a caged farm animal is even more dramatic. From several thousand in the 1950s there are now only 50 left in the wild. The Amur tiger of north-eastern China is the most threatened subspecies in the world. The captive population has exploded - at Xiongsen alone it has surged from 12 in 1992 to 1,300 today.

To conservationists, though, it is anything but a success story. Hu Hongfu of Traffic, a monitoring group linked to the World Wildlife Fund, says the park is breeding more tigers to blackmail the Chinese government and the international community. "Xiongsen is the worst of the tiger farms. It is run by individuals who breed for money. We have advised them to stop because more tigers means more problems, but they keep breeding because it puts pressure on the government to lift the ban."

The report quotes the parks sales manager,Bai Wenqiang, as stating: "The ban has really hurt our business, ... We believe international law allows trade in animals that have been reared by man for three generations. It is only the domestic law that prevents us now. We understand the Chinese government is under a lot of international pressure. They don't help us. But they don't give us trouble."

China has been using tigers for medicinal purposes for 5,000 years and a single animal can be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. The bones, used in tonics, are the most valuable part: the 25kg (55lb) yielded by the average tiger can fetch 2.4m yuan (£160,000), about 10 times the price of a pelt. At the Xiongsen park, sales assistants proffer tiger-shaped bottles of bone-strengthening wine for about £60. Each drop, they claim, is distilled in vats containing the paws of the animal, which - if proven - would be a contravention of domestic and international law: China banned the sale of tiger products in 1993.

This issue has stimulated further discussion on the potential solutions to saving endangered species - sustainable harversting? or a total ban?

To read the full article provided by Guardian Unlimited go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2056432,00.html