How Many South China Tigers Are Left In The World

How Many South China Tigers Are Left In The World – With tens of thousands of infrared cameras across the country tracking its movements, China has an eye on the tiger.

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2022 is the year of the Tiger. At first glance, tigers may seem like strange animals in the traditional zodiac scheme, having little to do with Chinese culture or the daily life of its people, but these big cats have a long history in China, where they have a strong presence. .And he was praised for his fearlessness. In fact, tigers are often spoken of in the same tones of respect usually reserved for dragons; It is a symbol of glory, power and authority. A line in the ancient text “The Book of Changes” says, “The clouds follow the dragon, and the winds follow the tiger.” Fighting a tiger is the epitome of bravery in Chinese culture, most prominently in the “Water Margin,” an ancient text of underworld heroism.

How Many South China Tigers Are Left In The World

How Many South China Tigers Are Left In The World

Outside the imaginary places of Jianghu, however, tigers almost disappeared from China 20 years ago. Taxonomically, all species in the world belong to the same species, although based on geographic distribution, the world population is divided into nine subspecies. Unfortunately, three of these subspecies – the Javan, Caspian and Balinese tigers – were driven to extinction in the mid to late 20th century. The South China tiger, although still hanging around, is believed to be extinct in the wild.

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Of the five subspecies left in the wild – Bengal, Sumatran, Siberian, Indochinese and Malayan tigers – only the Bengal and Siberian are not extinct. The world population of tigers is estimated at about 4,000, representing a decline of more than 95% in the last 100 years.

At the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it was estimated that there were more than 4,000 South China tigers in the wild. However, over the decades, population growth, the development of agriculture and private and state-sponsored hunting activities have led to a significant decrease in their numbers and populations. By the 1990s, the South China tiger had disappeared from the wild. At the turn of the millennium, experts believed that Siberian tigers had also disappeared from the forests of China. The other two subspecies found in the country – Bengal and Indochinese tigers – were already few and far between. In short, the fate of the Chinese tiger was on a knife’s edge.

Things began to improve after the turn of the millennium, as the world gradually realized the damage to the environment and the environment caused by decades of industrialization and the need for development continued to grow slowly. Although the tiger is still out in the wild, the Siberian tiger represents a true conservation success story; This is a good example of how China is working to protect important species and the entire ecosystem.

In 2015, after nearly 10 years of fieldwork and the creation of a wildlife monitoring network of 3,000 infrared cameras, a team from Beijing Normal University revealed that there were 27 wild tigers and 42 leopards in Hunchun, Jilin Province. Amur tiger. , on the border between China and Russia. Based on this evidence, construction of a road in the area has been halted and a high-speed railway has been restored from Hunchun to Vladivostok in Russia – both moves that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago. The following year, China created the Northern Tiger and Leopard National Park.

Project To Save South China Tigers In South Africa Lost In Wilderness

The Siberian tiger has been recorded in several places along the China-Russia border. In September 2014, a male Siberian tiger named “Kuzya” from the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia crossed the border into China’s Little Khingan Mountains – the first sighting of a tiger there since 1976. In April 2020, four tigers Siberians, including a mother and cub, were spotted in the Taipinggau National Nature Reserve in the northeastern Lesser Khingan Mountains near the Russian border.

In April 2021, a male Siberian tiger was spotted in an abandoned house in Linhu village in northeastern Heilongjiang. Concerned that it might not return home, experts captured the tiger and named it Vandshan-1, before safely releasing it into the wild, becoming the first Siberian tiger in China to be successfully rescued.

China’s approach to tiger conservation relies heavily on new and emerging technologies. Part of the integrated “ground, land and sky” monitoring platform, nearly 20,000 infrared cameras are installed in the mountains and forests of the Tiger and Leopard National Park in the northeast, covering an area of ​​14,000 square kilometers. Whenever an animal passes an infrared camera, photos and videos of the meeting are uploaded to the cloud, and the image data is automatically uploaded and stored using smart recognition software powered by artificial intelligence.

How Many South China Tigers Are Left In The World

It is the world’s first real-time biological survey to cover such a large area, and represents a great technology change from traditional methods that include maintaining a large network of human observers and maintaining lines based on the Surveying area map. . As of September 2021, the system had already uploaded and identified more than 20,000 images of Siberian tigers and Amur tigers, as well as more than 8 million images of other wild animals.

Cornell Researchers Confirm Exposure Of Wild Sumatran Tiger To Canine Distemper Virus

Tape camera networks have also proven effective in monitoring the small and elusive populations of Bengal and Indochinese tigers. In August 2019, scientists from the Kunming Institute of Zoology used infrared cameras to capture the first images of a Bengal tiger in Medog County on the border with India, indicating the presence of a small population.

This progress shows that although the threat to China’s tigers is still serious, the big cats are surviving.

Indeed, the return of tigers has brought new problems, such as increased conflict between people and tigers, including animal killings and accidental human injuries. The aforementioned Vandan-1 first hit and killed a village woman, smashed the car window, punctured the passenger’s shoulder and left a gaping hole in the car door.

Human conflict with tigers can only increase in the future, but this should not distract from the benefits of the wild tiger population. Healthy organisms have bottom producers (like green plants), primary consumers who eat plants (like rats), secondary consumers who eat small and medium consumers (like kittens) , and its apex Level consumers. medium and large consumption of primary and secondary consumers. If we only focus on the threats posed to humans by predators such as tigers and leopards – and therefore work towards their extinction – the ecosystem will become unbalanced, leading to its decline and destruction .

Tigers Rescued From Argentina Get New Home In South Africa

However, measures can and should be taken to reduce the chances of conflict, including improving environmental compensation and insurance, publicizing the importance of tiger and leopard conservation practices, and human-tiger conflict. It is possible. infection.

Even in the last 24 years, China’s tiger prospects have improved greatly. Although the tiger population is still critically endangered, there is reason to hope that the next few years of the tiger boom will see these cats excel at hunting. Today, there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild. Compared to its cousins, the Siberian tiger, which has a large forest to travel in the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, most tigers in South China are kept in cages in zoo with limited space. It seems that they lost their senses and collapsed in front of the visitors, as if they felt that they could never return to nature.

Some conservationists have not given up hope of releasing the South China tiger into the wild. Their main task is not only to train these dangerous animals, but also to find suitable habitats for them to be released.

How Many South China Tigers Are Left In The World

The most important and controversial project was launched by Save China Tigers (SCT), an international organization founded by Quan Li, a Chinese woman, and her American banker husband, Stuart Bray. His original idea was to send captive tigers from South China to South Africa to teach them how to survive in the wild. They planned to send the second or third generation with the ability to hunt in the forest back to China, where they lived.

A Roaring Comeback: How China’s Tigers Returned From The Dead

In 2002, SCT launched a conservation program for South China tigers with the State Forestry Administration, now known as the National Forestry and Grassland Administration. A year later, two southern Chinese tiger cubs named “Guotai” and “Shiwang” left the Shanghai Zoo and went to South Africa. Three more children joined them in 2004 and 2007.

As of 2016, the number of South China tigers living in the Lahu Valley Reserve in South Africa has increased to 19. The big cats have evolved to hunt and breed like their ancestors in this class of 330.

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