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WildAid Tiger Claw Champions @ KUNG FU TAI CHI 25TH ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL

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WildAid Tiger Claw Champions @ KUNG FU TAI CHI 25TH ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL

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WildAid Tiger Claw Champions @ KUNG FU TAI CHI 25TH ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL

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WildAid, the benefactors of our WildAid Tiger Claw Champion, Yao Ming & ivory.

Yao Ming and WildAid inform Chinese consumers that buying ivory is now illegal
December 27, 2017



The greatest single step toward reducing elephant poaching will come into effect on Sunday when it will be illegal to buy or sell ivory in China. The country was once the world's largest market for illicit ivory, and a major driver of rampant elephant poaching in Africa.

"We can start 2018 hopeful that elephants will be safer now that China has banned commercial ivory sales. Prices are down and law enforcement efforts in many parts of Africa and Asia are much improved," said WildAid CEO Peter Knights.

"The UN has unanimously called for domestic ivory sales bans, and many other countries are responding with action. Japan alone remains unwilling to join the global community on this issue," Knights said.

WildAid is now shifting its demand reduction campaign to educating Chinese consumers that ivory can no longer be bought or sold legally. Long-time WildAid ambassador and former NBA star Yao Ming is featured in a new video and billboard campaign releasing today across the country.



In 2012, Yao Ming and WildAid produced the first documentary on ivory poaching to air nationally on China Central Television, China's state broadcast network also known as CCTV.

Additionally, with WildAid, African Wildlife Foundation and Save the Elephants, Yao Ming launched one of the largest ever public awareness campaigns. Chinese public and private media donated more than US$180 million in media space during 2013-2016. As a result, a 2017 WildAid survey showed a 70% increase in knowledge that ivory comes from poached elephants over the past five years.

In 2014, Yao Ming proposed to the National People's Congress that ivory sales be banned in China. That same year, China carried out its first ever destruction of seized ivory, indicating a sea change in attitude from the government. After strong collaboration with the Obama Administration, President Xi announced the ban on December 30, 2016.

Many Chinese celebrities joined Yao Ming in the "Ivory Free" campaign, including Li Bingbing, Jay Chou, Lang Lang and Jiang Wen. International icons Prince William, David Beckham, Lupita Nyong'o, Maggie Q, Sir Richard Branson, Edward Norton, Ian Somerhalder, the cast of The Walking Dead and many others also participated in the campaign.

Dozens of messages featuring WildAid ambassadors were broadcast on more than 25 TV networks, outdoor video screens and movie theaters in China. Also, thousands of billboards were placed in over 20 Chinese cities.

IUCN estimates that the population of African elephants declined by 111,000 over the past ten years. The overall trends in the poaching of African elephants show a decline from the 2011 peak, but are still at levels too high when viewed continent-wide. The overall population of African elephants is likely to have declined in 2016.

While efforts in Eastern Africa have helped reduce poaching to pre-2008 levels, unfortunately illegal killing of Central Africa's forest elephants remains very high. This compounds the dramatic losses experienced in the region over the past decade. Between 2008 and 2016, elephant populations declined by 66% in parts of Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Gabon, according to a WWF survey.

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Thread: 10th Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship - May 19-20 2018, San Jose CA
Thread: WildAid Tiger Claw Champion

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TCE KungFuMagazine.com Championship X Photos by Kevin Ho

This first batch is WildAid & Ku Yu Cheung Bak Sil Lum Championship competitors.

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WILDAID TIGER CLAW CHAMPIONS (虎爪精英盃)
Tiger Claw Champion: Lei Fan - Kung Fu Dragon USA, Pleasanton CA
Teen Tiger Champion: Naoki Tang - Elite Kung Fu, Fremont CA
Tiger Cub Champion: Mariella Brayton - US Wushu Center, Portland OR

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There's some nice short vids behind the link.

China’s push to export traditional medicine may doom the magical pangolin
By Simon Denyer
July 21

In a rescue center, the pangolin slowly wakes and uncurls, sniffing out a nighttime feast of ants’ eggs, then lapping it up with its implausibly long tongue. One of 74 pangolins rescued from the back of a truck in Vietnam in April, its survival has defied the odds.

This almost mystical creature, looking like a cross between an anteater and an armadillo but unrelated to either, is the world’s most trafficked mammal: A million of them are thought to have been poached from the wild in just a decade.

Already almost wiped out in China, the pangolin is fast disappearing from the jungles of the rest of Asia and, increasingly, from Africa to supply China’s booming market in traditional medicine.

Now, as China pushes to export traditional medicine around the world under the umbrella of its Belt and Road investment plan, many wildlife experts fear that the animal faces extinction — unless something changes very soon.

“Traditional Chinese medicine should be a healing force for good, but not at the expense of animal cruelty or the extinction of species,” said Iris Ho, wildlife program manager at Humane Society International.

China’s decision to ban the ivory trade at the end of last year gave hope to those battling elephant poaching, “but the real litmus test lies within China’s action — or lack of action — in pangolin conservation,” Ho said.

The air of mystery attaching to the reclusive pangolin has been its downfall, sparking an unjustified belief that its scales have magical medicinal properties. In hospitals and pharmacies across China and Vietnam, powder made from pangolin scales is prescribed for an impossibly wide range of ailments, including rheumatism, wound infections, skin disorders, coronary heart disease and even cancer.

Mothers take powdered pangolin scales to help them lactate, while men drink pangolin blood or consume fetuses in the belief that this will make them more virile.


A woman shops on a Hong Kong street popular for dried foods used in traditional Chinese medicine and dishes including deep-fried scales of endangered pangolins. (Dale de La Rey/AFP/Getty Images)

The use of pangolins in Chinese medicine dates back thousands of years. A 16th-century document recommends eating their scales to reduce swelling, invigorate blood circulation and promote lactation. A 1938 article in Nature suggests they were used to treat malaria, deafness, “hysterical crying” in children and women possessed by “devils and ogres.”

In fact, the scales are made of keratin, a fibrous protein that is the main ingredient of hair, feathers, claws and hoofs throughout the animal kingdom; patients might as well chew their own fingernails.

Pangolins are also served at the dinner table, despite a ban on pangolin meat in China imposed during the 2002-2004 SARS epidemic amid fears that exotic meats could spread disease.

The pangolin is the world’s most trafficked mammal: A million of them are thought to have been poached from the wild in just a decade. (Paul Hilton for WildAid)

In late 2016, all eight species of pangolin were listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), making all international trade in them illegal. But that does not obligate China or Vietnam to curb domestic trade — except to the extent that such trade now relies mostly on sources abroad.

Customs officials make regular seizures at China’s ports, but the very size of those captures makes depressing reading: In the southern city of Shenzhen, 13 tons of scales were seized in November alone, representing tens of thousands of slaughtered pangolins.

Nocturnal and solitary, the pangolin has an effective defense against most predators — even lions can’t work out what to do when the animal rolls up into an armored ball. Its English name comes from the Malay word “pengguling,” which means rolling ball; its Chinese name, chuanshanjia, refers to its supposed ability to “bore through mountains,” a reference to the powerful claws that dig into anthills and termite mounds before that sticky tongue gets to work.

Pangolin mothers carry their young on their backs for the first three months and curl up around the babies if attacked until the young ones’ scales are sufficiently hard.

But the sensitive pangolin adapts poorly to captivity, almost always dying in a few months or years because of stress, disease or digestive problems without reproducing. Secretive pangolin “farms” in China are basically fronts for trafficking operations, experts say.

Conservation groups are trying to reduce demand by educating people about the dangers facing the pangolin and better ways to treat human disease than by consuming animal keratin.


A veterinarian with Save Vietnam’s Wildlife holds an injured pangolin. The false belief that pangolin scales and other parts have magical medicinal properties has fueled a trade that threatens the creature’s survival. (Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty Images)

The China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, a nonprofit group, has publicly exposed people selling or consuming pangolin meat, including a Chinese businessman who boasted online of enjoying “pangolin blood fried rice” on a trip to Vietnam. After a backlash on social media, he was sacked.

WildAid, whose use of Chinese celebrities to curb demand for ivory and shark fin soup has achieved considerable success, is trying the same approach for pangolins, enlisting the actors Jackie Chan and Angelababy in China and former Miss Universe Pham Huong in Vietnam to front publicity campaigns. It is also trying to persuade traditional-medicine practitioners to use alternative treatments.

Almost wiped out in China, the pangolin is disappearing from the jungles of Asia and also from Africa, to supply China’s traditional medicine boom. (Paul Hilton for WildAid)

Peter Knights, WildAid’s founder, argues that traditional Chinese medicine needs to stop using endangered wildlife products if it wants to become more accepted globally.

“If you want to expand it, you’ve got to clean it up,” he says, citing as precedents the removal of tiger bone and rhinoceros horn from China’s list of approved medicinal ingredients.

But surveys by the Aita Foundation and Humane Society International and by the U.S. Agency for International Development Wildlife Asia project suggest that the message is not yet getting through to the small but significant percentage of Chinese who still consume pangolin products.

Changing minds will not be easy as long as China’s government promotes the “medicinal” use of pangolin scales. Authorities claim to have a stockpile from which they supply hospitals and pharmacies with 26 tons of scales every year but offer no transparency about that process, effectively legitimizing the entire smuggling trade.

China also sparked controversy at a recent CITES meeting by arguing that it should have the right to purchase stockpiles of scales from other countries that were amassed before the Appendix I listing, an interpretation of the convention’s rules not shared by the United States or many other nations.

Meanwhile, on Vietnam’s border with China, powerful criminal gangs control the trafficking of people, drugs and wildlife products, bribing officials to turn a blind eye.

Scott Roberton of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Vietnam says it is hard to convince Asian governments of the importance of saving pangolins, as compared to elephants, rhinos and tigers. He hopes to gain traction by stressing how pangolin trafficking is caught up with other forms of transnational crime and by highlighting the public-health risks of the trade.

But the odds are steep. China’s traditional-medicine authorities have unveiled an ambitious plan to expand along the Belt and Road trade routes, with 57 international cooperation projects due to get underway this year.

And reports of Chinese companies’ trying to open pangolin “farms” in Africa, and of scales being prescribed by Chinese doctors in places as far-flung as South Africa and the United States, have intensified conservationists’ fears.

Nguyen Van Thai, who founded Save Vietnam’s Wildlife and runs the rescue center in Cuc Phuong National Park, says there is still no good strategy for curbing demand for scales or convincing the Chinese government that its support for the pangolin trade could damage its global reputation.

“China wants to show its power,” he said. “The more pressure you put on them, the more they resist.”

Liu Yang in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Consider alternatives to pangolin scales, traditional Chinese medicine professors urge at conservation conference in Hong Kong
HKU academic warns that illegal vendors exaggerate the effectiveness of the scales for treating various conditions
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 06 September, 2018, 1:22pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 06 September, 2018, 9:09pm
Karen Zhang
https://twitter.com/karenised
karen.zhang@scmp.com



There are alternatives to pangolin scales that have similar medicinal qualities, Chinese medicine professors said, urging the public not to believe the exaggerated effects touted by illegal vendors.

Their call, made at an international conservation conference on Wednesday, came as the Post reported that the amount seized in the first seven months of this year had reached a five-year high, with most of the contraband being sourced from Africa.

At the event, traditional Chinese medicine academics, pangolin experts and conservationists from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and Africa gathered at the University of Hong Kong to discuss how to protect the highly trafficked mammals.

The scales, comprising mainly keratin and believed to have high medicinal value, were found to be a major reason behind the poaching of the animals, whose meat is also seen as a delicacy. There is no scientific evidence showing that pangolin scales are effective as a treatment.

“Many herbal medicines have very similar functions to pangolin scales,” said Professor Lao Lixing, director of HKU’s School of Chinese Medicine, during the conference organised by international conservation group WildAid.

According to Lao, in Chinese medicine, it usually takes between five and nine grams of processed scales per dose, along with supplementary materials, to treat conditions such as breast milk stoppage, rheumatoid arthritis, sores and furuncles.

He explained that the industry often associated the medical qualities of an ingredient with the animal’s behaviour.

“[Pangolins] can go through the soil, so it’s believed that [their scales] can go through the vessels,” Lao said, referring to the meridian system, through which life energy flows in traditional Chinese medicine.


Pangolins in Indonesia are at risk of extinction thanks to an illicit trade that sees thousands of them trafficked each year. Photo: AFP

Lao listed six substitutes including cowherb seeds, known in Chinese as wang bu liu xing, which could be used for promoting milk secretion. Earthworms, known as di long, can also dispel “heatiness” and expel wind from the body.

“There are so many [substitutes] if you look at the textbook of Chinese medicine. I just named a few here,” he said.

Lao called on the Chinese government to educate the public about the medical properties of pangolin scales, as he feared that some people might think the products must be effective if they were banned. The effects were often exaggerated by illegal vendors, he said.

Dr Feng Yibin, associate director at the same school, said the institution’s teachers always made it clear to students that the species were endangered and should not be used, although students were told about their medicinal value.

On the mainland, raw pangolin scales can be obtained only at designated hospitals and from approved pharmaceutical companies, while legally sold processed scales must display a special label issued by the government.

The Chinese government has supported captive breeding as a solution by granting approval to some companies to raise pangolins. International experts at in the conference however questioned the feasibility of this approach.


Their scales, believed to have high medicinal value, were found to be a major reason behind the poaching of pangolins. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Dr Helen Nash, vice-chairwoman of the pangolin specialist group under the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission, cited an IUCN study stating that pangolin farming was not financially viable and that many animals had died in captivity.

Nash said that although the success rate of raising pangolins in captivity was a lot higher than it used to be, the cost of doing so – about US$7,000 – could not be covered by the animal’s market value. She added that zoos in Singapore and Taipei had tried for decades to raise pangolins but only managed to raise a handful. There was currently no commercial data for assessment, she said.

WildAid CEO Peter Knights voiced concern that commercial farming would become an excuse for encouraging the wildlife trade as it was too expensive, slow and suffered from very high mortality.

Dr Sun Quanhui, a senior scientific adviser from World Animal Protection, cited a 2010 survey that found most consumers were willing to buy wild bear bile at a higher price despite being given three alternatives, including bile from farmed bears.

He added that using wildlife would be an obstacle to Chinese medicine going global as it left a negative impression and would face restrictions imposed by international players.

According to WildAid, Chinese pangolins have disappeared from most of their habitats, with their population having fallen by more than 94 per cent since the 1960s. The demand then shifted towards the neighbouring Sunda pangolin, which in turn suffered an 80 per cent decline over the last 21 years.

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FALL 2018

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Jackie Chan's 'Kung Fu Pangolins' bag Shorty nomination
Updated Oct. 26, 2018, 3:10 p.m. | By The Scenic Drive with Rian

International kung fu superstar Jackie Chan is doing his part to protect the endangered pangolin, and the Shorty Social Good Awards panel is taking notice.


Facebook screenshot

Pangolins are the most trafficked wild mammal in the world and are regarded as an endangered species. The anteaters have tough scales, which poachers sell along with meat from the pangolin's body.

In 2017, American environmental organisation WildAid enlisted the help of international kung fu superstar Jackie Chan in creating a public service announcement about protecting pangolins. In it, Chan trains three pangolins to protect themselves by fighting back.

The PSA, which carries the tagline "It takes just one move to protect pangolins", was viewed 13 million times on social media. The campaign has now been named as a finalist in the Shorty Social Good Awards.
The impression left by the PSA was positive, with Shorty reporting notable changes in people's attitudes towards the buying and selling of pangolin products since seeing Jackie Chan's message.

WildAid's mission is to end illegal wildlife trade through public awareness campaigns. It's a noble cause that must be fought for - and it certainly helps to have a famous face to help it along. Jackie Chan exudes his trademark humour, charm and agility as he teaches the animals how to protect themselves, making the PSA as fun to watch as it is educational.

Chan has previously shown his concern for preserving wildlife species in a video aimed at curbing rhino poaching called "Say No", which was shot with the African Wildlife Foundation.

Image: WildAid

The PSA was posted here last year.

Jackie Charity work - Pangolins & WildAid