BEIJING - Animal rights activists are calling for improvements to China's cash-strapped wild animal parks.
Officials say disease and starvation are prevalent.
In one case, a tiger was killed by four other cats in a fight over meagre food supplies at a zoo in northeast China.
An official at Bing Chuan park in Shenyang says the park's 30 tigers have been receiving less than their normal allowance of about five kilograms of frozen chicken and beef a day
He blames lack of funding.
The park relies on entrance fees for most of its income but that cold weather tends to keep visitors away.
"The winter in northeast China is too cold, no one wants to come out and go to the zoo, so there are almost no visitors during the winter,'' the official, who gave only his surname, Li, told The Associated Press by telephone.
Such incidents underscore a major irony in China's attempts to save its dwindling number of tigers.
While fewer than 50 are believed to remain alive in the wild in China, about 5,000 are held captive on farms and wildlife parks that often struggle to house and feed them.
A manager at the Dongbei Hu Ling Yuan tiger park in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, home to about 800 tigers, said poor conditions at parks were causing tiger deaths.
Lifting tiger parts ban?
The park was keeping the carcasses of 200 dead tigers in freezers, one official said, but declined to say how they died or why their bodies were being preserved. The man declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Jeff He, communications manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare in China, said the tiger parks were using such incidents to pressure the government into lifting a 1993 ban on domestic trade in tiger parts, which are prized in traditional Chinese medicine.
Operators already have some government support for lifting the ban.
Chinese officials have reportedly sought support for plans to farm tigers for their body parts from India, home to the world's largest remaining wild tiger population. India opposes lifting the ban.
The ban imposed stiff sentences on offenders and forced pharmacies to empty their shelves of tiger medications, believed to cure ailments from convulsions to skin disease and to increase sexual potency.
However, activists warn that permitting farmed tiger parts to be sold would spur poaching because it is cheaper to kill a wild animal than to raise a tiger on a farm and the parts are indistinguishable.
"Lifting the ban would threaten the wild tigers left in China and neighbouring countries,'' He said.
Worldwide estimates point to about 3,000 to 5,000 wild tigers left in the world. However, conservationists believe the estimates are grossly exaggerated.
Li said animals at his park made it through previous winters with the help of subsidies from the city government, and said park officials were negotiating with them for a solution.
The park allows visitors to drive their vehicles among tigers, bears, wolves and other animals roaming free. Entrance fees in the winter are $8 a person, half the $16 charged in the summer.
