A Chinese court has sentenced a man to 12 years in jail, plus a fine, for killing an endangered Indochinese tiger - which was made into a stew and eaten.

The Mengla county court in Xishuangbanna has sentenced Kang Wannian to 12 years in jail, plus a fine of over $14,642 USD, for killing an endangered Indochinese tiger in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

Kang claimed he did not know the animal he shot was a tiger.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Kang Wannian and Gao Zuqiao were allegedly hunting for frogs in the Xishuangbanna national nature reserve when the shooting occurred.

He shot to death what he claimed an “unspecified animal” after dark while in a hunt with Gao Zuqiao for a kind of frog in the Xishuangbanna national nature reserve in February. The two fled the scene after learning the animal was a tiger.

China Daily reported earlier that Kang’s accomplice Gao, along with a group of villagers, dismembered the tiger’s body the next day and allegedly made a stew out of the tiger.

Kang’s wife and Gao asked five fellow villagers to the reserve the next day to dismember the tiger and take it home, where they stewed and ate it, the court heard.

Gao received four years of jail time and has been ordered to pay a 20,000 yuan fine. Three of the villagers were fined 10,000 yuan and given three years of jail (but with a reprieve of four years).

Kang was also ordered to pay 480,000 yuan for state economic losses and two guns were confiscated.

The Chinese market for illegal tiger products

Thanks to the insatiable Chinese demand for products derived from tigers, wild tigers now number fewer than 4,000 - a 95% percent decline in population since 1900.

Currently, there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that tiger parts or derivatives are effective remedies or medicines - yet China’s obsession with tiger parts has created a thriving poaching network and decimated the wild tiger population to only just 4,000 today.

Many wildlife experts warn that 2010 Year of the Tiger - combined with China’s “new wealth” and increased purchasing power - will result in an unprecedented surge in tiger poaching and the extinction of wild tigers.

The Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti) population is around 300.

Source - GO Media - Written by Rhishja Larson - Image source: Wikimedia Commons