TIGERS in the USA, their claws and teeth cruelly removed, are chained to the ground to be used as props for tourist photo opportunities.

While in China they are kept on farms, in cages no larger than those housing battery hens, lay in their own urine and faeces waiting to be killed so their valuable body parts can be used in traditional Chinese medicines, or turned into tiger bone wine.

Time is running out for these beleaguered animals. The tiger farms in China are lobbying hard for restrictions on the trade of tiger parts to be eased, which would mean an increase in the numbers of farms and more poaching from the wild. The wild tiger populations would be doomed.

The Government cares because it is a member of the Global Tiger Forum, but more nations have to become involved if these precious animals are to be saved.

I am therefore asking concerned readers to write to Hilary Thompson, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Eastbury House, 30-34 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TL, urging her to lobby other governments around the world to join the forum as a matter of urgency, before all the tigers in the wild have vanished.

Sara Lee Bury Old Road Whitefield