Chinese Tigers To Attend Hunting School In Africa

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News And Features; International News

Chinese Tigers To Attend Hunting School In Africa

Hamish Mcdonald

 

12/09/2002

Sydney Morning Herald

9

Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd

 

China is to send to South Africa tiger cubs born in captivity to learn

hunting skills so they can be released into the wild.

 

With the number of tigers in the wild thought to be as low as 30,

Chinese conservationists are ready to try desperate measures to avoid

the endangered sub-species of Chinese tiger, or Panthera tigris

amoyensis, becoming only a zoo animal.

About 60 of the species survive and breed in zoos and game parks, but

they are thought to have lost the ability to fend for themselves in the

natural environment.

 

The State Forestry Administration's Wildlife Research Centre has just

signed an agreement for the new foreign education program with two

non-government organisations, London-based Save China's Tigers, and

Chinese Tigers South Africa.

 

``China currently is not able to help the cubs regain hunting

skills,'' a scientist in the Chinese research centre, Lu Jun, told the

official Xinhua news agency.

 

Selected tiger cubs from Chinese zoos will be sent to South Africa,

where they will be trained to hunt in a 300-square-kilometre area

secured by the two organisations. Once able to hunt their own food, they

will be returned to a pilot reserve in China where the habitat and prey

animals have been restored.

 

The first ``rehabilitated'' tigers are expected to be released into

the wild in 2008, coinciding with the Beijing Olympics, and thereafter

will become the focus of eco-tourism ventures.

 

The Chinese tiger is thought to be the species from which all other

tigers evolved, but like tigers everywhere in Asia it has been

threatened with extinction by human encroachment and deforestation, and

by hunters seeking to sell its skins.

 

The founder of Save China's Tigers, Li Quan, hopes more than a dozen

endangered species can be preserved along with the tiger, which operates

at the apex of a widespread food chain.

 

 

 

Folder Name: Asia Conservation Tiger

Relevance Score on Scale of 100: 97

 

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