Tiger stud on SA mission
2007-04-24 11:45
Shanghai - A South China tiger, one of
fewer than 100 in existence, took off from a Shanghai airport
on Monday for a romantic mission to Africa that might help save
the species.
The four-year-old male, known only by his breeding registry
number "327", is to be paired with a young female of the same
species in a South African reserve.
The idea is for the tigers to mix in a wild environment,
breed and brush up on their hunting skills before being
returned to their native habitat in China.
China's Suzhou South China Tiger Reserve volunteered the
male tiger for the mating mission.
"South Africa offers land, expertise and prey animals, so
it facilitates the tiger re-wilding in a much quicker and
faster way," said Li Quan, founder of the charity Save China's
Tigers.
She said China had initiated experiments but they did not
go very far, although plans are afoot eventually to bring the
tigers back to a reserve in China.
With only about 10 to 30 left in the wild and another 60 in
captivity, the Chinese sub-species of the tiger clan is on the
brink of extinction.
Squeezed out in Asia
Two pairs have already been sent to the 33 000-hectare
Laohu Valley Reserve in the Free State
since September 2003: a male named "Hope", his
prospective partner "Cathay", and a younger pair, "Tiger Woods"
and "Madonna". "Laohu" means "tiger" in Chinese.
Since Hope died of illness two years ago, reserve officials
have been seeking a new mate for Cathay, who is now reaching
sexual maturity, and number 327 seemed a perfect match.
"He is a very fertile stud tiger, one of the finer tigers
here," said David Chen, director of the Suzhou reserve, which
is home to 14 of the striped cats.
Feared as man-eaters but revered as majestic symbols of the
wild, the South China tigers and other sub-species are being
squeezed out in Asia by habitat loss as human populations
swell.
The re-wilding programme has had initial success as the
tigers moved from hunting birds to bigger prey such as the
blesbok, a white-faced African antelope that is similar in size
to the deer species the tigers hunt in China.
Tiger 327 will make the three-day jet and helicopter
journey, via Hong Kong and Johannesburg, in a cargo box with
only water, although Zhang Lin of Save China's Tigers said
tigers can go for five days without food in the wild.
Conservationists are already planning for the re-wilded
group's return to China.
"We would be choosing from a few areas from the original
habitat of the South China tigers to rebuild," said Lu Jun,
associate research professor at the National Wildlife Research
and Development Centre.
Save China's Tigers said this was still in the planning
stage but sites had already been identified in Zixi in Jiangxi
province and in Liuyang in Hunan province, both in southeastern
China.