FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE SCHOOL PRESIDENT, LEADER IN TIGER
CONSERVATION HEADS TO RUSSIA FOR TCM CONVENTION
Nov 20, 2010-San Francisco-AMERICAN COLLEGE OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE President Lixin Huang will represent the TCM community at the Tiger Summit to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nov 21-24. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is hosting this conference, which is being convened for the sole purpose of saving the species from extinction. The tiger population has plummeted from over 100,000 a century ago to only 3200 today. The summit is part of the Global Tiger Initiative launched in 2008 to promote tiger conservation. Both governmental and private funding will develop programs that target deforestation, trafficking, and poaching of tigers. The goal is to double the wild tiger population by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger. All 13 Asian countries that tigers call home have already agreed, in principle, to achieving this goal.
President Huang has been a leading voice in the effort to educate people about the role of tigers in TCM. While tiger parts have historically been considered an integral healing resource, when the species was abundant. It is the official position of Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine(CCAOM) that environmental concerns outweigh the need for tigers in treatment; further, patient care is not compromised, as other equally effective resources have been developed. CCAOM also opposes so-called tiger farms, and repudiate any attempts to affiliate TCM needs as justification for their existence.
In an article featured in the Washington Post, actor and environmental activist Leonardo di Caprio and World Wildlife Fund President Carter Roberts explain that tigers are what conservationists call an “umbrella” species. By rescuing them, we save everything beneath their ecological umbrella-everything connected to them, including the world’s last great forests. Saving tigers is a compelling and cost-effective means of prserving so much more that is essential to life on Earth.
The Tiger Summit is part of a yearlong effort to bring focus to the critical plight of wild tigers in this, the Year of the Tiger. President Huang also attended pre-summit conferences earlier this year in Nepal and Thailand.
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American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine is a non-profit higher learning institution located in San Francisco since 1980. For more information regarding the schools conservation efforts please contact Alissa Cohan alissacohan@actcm.edu
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