LAHORE, July 25 The permission granted to Suleman Shahbaz, the younger son of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, to import a pair of Siberian tigers in violation of a ban on the import of big cat family members has triggered strong demands that the restriction should be done away with also for other private park owners.

A Lahore official told Dawn on Saturday that the National Council for the Conservation of Wildlife (NCCW), a federal agency, has rejected in the recent months several requests from the private wildlife park owners in Punjab and Sindh for the import of big cats.

“The NCCW has always taken the position that only the public sector can be allowed to import the carnivorous beast from the cat family,” said Tauqeer Shah, vice-chairman of the Lahore Zoo Management Committee (ZMC). “It is a wrong policy. The private wildlife farms and game reserves should be allowed to import them.”

He also termed the ban on the import of big cats uncalled for, saying the legislation on the issue was still to be passed. He said the provincial governments in Sindh and Punjab had given permits to around 20 wildlife parks in the private sector. They had applied to the NCCW for licences to import big cats but all requests had been turned down.

The NCCW has also issued permit for the import of two white tigers for the Lahore Zoo. Mr Shah said the permit for white tigers was rightly issued because the conservation and preservation should not be stopped to prevent many species becoming a part of past.

Suleman Shahbaz has already imported a Siberian tiger for his family's wildlife breeding farm at Jatti Umra near Lahore for which the federal government had issued the licence in violation of its own ban. When this reporter tried to contact him, his family said he was out of the country. Mr Suleman has got the permit for a pair of Siberian tigers. He has got the male tiger whereas the tigress is still to come.

His secretary, Sikandar Pasha, who had received the tiger at the airport early this week, also did not respond to repeated calls made by this reporter.

He didn't even reply to a message sent on his cell phone. When approached, a Punjab government spokesman said “The provincial government had nothing to do with this matter. It is between an individual and the federal government. You better contact Suleman's office or the federal government that had granted him the permission to import the tiger.” He, however, said no law had been violated.

Wildlife conservator from the NCCW, Umaid Khalid, also was not available for his comment as he avoided taking calls despite repeated efforts.

The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is also known as the Amur, Manchurian, Altaic, Korean, North China or, Ussuri tiger. Though it once ranged throughout Western and Central Asia and eastern Russia, it is now completely confined to the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in far eastern Siberia, where it is now protected.

It is the biggest of the eight recent tiger subspecies and the largest living feline. Genetic research in 2009 revealed that the current Siberian tiger population is almost identical to the Caspian tiger, a now extinct western population once thought to have been a distinct subspecies, which was extinct just in the wild before it was completely wiped out.