Customs and forestry authorities face a difficult dilemma: How to handle the pile of wild animal products of endangered species police have seized during crackdowns on smugglers and poachers.

Most officials tend to set fires to such contraband while experts and scholars prefer preserving the materials as specimens for research and as teaching tools.

Lhasa Customs in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region seized 1,393 rare animal hides last October during a routine check.

It was the largest smuggling case since 1949, and involved hides of many rare animals under government protection, including Bengal tigers, leopards, lynxes and otters.

Three smuggling suspects were prosecuted in the case.

"Following the adjudication of the case, we are going to burn the hides," Nima Ciren, deputy director of the Lhasa Customs anti-smuggling bureau, replied promptly when asked about evidence disposal.

The authorities say destroying all the hides shows their firm stand against such crimes and removes any profit-making potential.

At the end of last year, police in southwest China's Yunnan Province destroyed nearly 25 tons of wildlife products.

Local police seized the contraband--which included the skin, meat, bones, and internal organs of 48 rare wild animals--during the year.

Law enforcement agencies generally burn seized contraband, including pirated VCDs and DVDs, to keep them from being sold for profit.

But some experts insist that this is not the best method of disposal, especially when it comes to animal products.

"Although customs has the right to do so in terms of its rules, at least some of these items should be handed over to the forestry authorities for research, teaching or training," said Meng Xianlin, head of the Beijing-based state office responsible for the protection of endangered species, in a Wednesday telephone interview with China Daily.

"Destroying them is, of course, a sort of international practice," Meng admitted. But he noted that this is not a requirement under international conventions.

In 1992, the State Forestry Administration enacted a regulation that requires wildlife or animal products seized to be preserved or delivered to scientific research institutes.

"Law enforcement authorities should consult us about the matter before taking action or destroying the materials," Meng added.

Meng says his office has offered seized items to many institutes, including a few specimens such as Tibetan antelope hides to foreign agencies in France, India and Britain for training courses offered to police or customs inspectors.

"Destroying the seized animal products, particularly endangered animal species that cannot be found in China, is no doubt a reckless waste," said Feng Zuojian, a senior professor from the Institute of Zoology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Specimens of rare and endangered animals are in short supply in China, especially sets of intact skulls of some subspecies of wild animals not indigenous to the country. "They are badly needed by research institutes like ours," said Feng, also the secretary-general of the China Zoological Society.

He feels strongly that, "Only research and teaching institutes are able to preserve such items as specimens and to make full use of their value."

Yet preserving the products can be expensive.

Estimates put the annual expense for preserving bones and hides of some rare species, including dead tigers and leopards, at more than 1 million yuan (US$120,480) at some of China's key wild animal breeding bases, said a CAS expert who asked that his name not be disclosed.

"The authorities can probably destroy some of them by updating regulations rather than simply requiring preservation of all of them," the expert said.

(China Daily March 4, 2004)