While they may look more at home in a Canadian hunting lodge, stuffed polar bears are becoming the new must-have item for China's nouveau riche.
Sales of legally imported mounted specimens of polar bears and other animals are booming in a Beijing exhibition hall, reported Beijing Youth Daily.
“Business is going well,” a saleswoman at the hall, outside of the capital’s northern Fifth Ring Road, told the newspaper.
“One company boss came and bought a 3.3-meter-tall stuffed polar bear for 600,000 yuan (US$96,238) without any bargaining,” she added.
And if a polar bear is beyond the means of some customers, then they can buy a stuffed arctic fox for 80,000 yuan.
Among 30 or so lines are complete elk and lions, and the heads of elephants, deer and zebras, reported the newspaper.
Sellers claimed that all the stuffed animals died "of natural causes". They were imported legally from South Africa and Canada through a Tianjin company granted import rights by conservation authorities.
Every specimen has a unique collection certificate issued by China Wildlife Mark Center, including its name, producer and other detailed information.
Anyone seeking to import stuffed specimens of animals listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora must apply to the State Forestry Administration, an official with the agency said.
However, conservationists are not so keen on the trade. “Private collections of stuffed animals are against our animal protection efforts,” Xie Yan, an assistant researcher from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Shanghai Daily.
[Image via Flickr]
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