Save China's Tigers

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Save China's Tigers, organization logo

Save China's Tigers (SCT) is an international charitable foundation based in Hong Kong, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Office in London) which aims to save the big cats of China from extinction. It focuses on the Chinese tigers (South China tigers). It also has branches in Mainland China and South Africa.

Aims

Stud tiger 327 with his potential mate, Cathay

According to Save China's Tigers the organization's vision is to raise awareness of the plight of the Chinese tiger and to strive for its protection and preservation through public education, introduction and experimentation with advanced conservation models in China and abroad, and raising funds to support these initiatives. Another aim is to act as a liaison for all those organizations concerned with the conservation of China's wildlife, sustainable development, biodiversity and habitat. According to Save China's Tigers the organizations goal is to reverse the fate of the South China tiger from the brink of extinction by taking them out of zoos, breeding them, letting them regain their hunting abilities, and reintroducing them back to China's wild.[1][better source needed]

History

"Save China's Tigers" was founded in 2000 by Li Quan.[2]

Rewilding

Origin

The word "rewilding" was coined by conservationist and activist Dave Foreman,[3] first occurring in print in 1990.[4] The concept was further defined and expanded by conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss in a paper published in 1998.[5] According to Soulé and Noss, rewilding is a conservation method based on "cores, corridors, and carnivores."[6]

The rewilding process

Tigerwoods mounting Madonna

In order to be successfully reintroduced into a wild environment, tigers must know how to hunt prey and have to be able to defend themselves. Once in captivity, an animal will gradually lose its ability to survive in the wild, and will likely die if released. Thus Save China's Tigers started a rehabilitation programme to help captive tigers regain their survival skills. Rehabilitation steps taken by the project include feeding the tigers with carcasses of small game. Once the tigers are eating the new food items, live animals similar to those taken dead will be occasionally introduced into large hunting camps. The SPCA claimed that this process was cruel to the prey, but the South African courts refused to issue an interdict.[7]

The Laohu Valley Reserve

Main article: Laohu Valley Reserve

The Laohu Valley Reserve (LVR) is a roughly 350 square kilometer private reserve near Philippolis in the Free State.[8] It has been created with the aims of rewilding captive-born South China tigers and for South African biodiversity conservation in general. LVR was created in 2002 out of 17 defunct sheep farms,[9][10][11] and efforts to return the overgrazed land to natural status are ongoing. The South China tigers at LVR for rewilding are kept confined to a tiger-proof camp complex of roughly 1.8 square kilometers, with other areas of the reserve being used to protect native South African species. The word "laohu" is a Chinese term for tiger.[12]

The tigers involved

In April 2014 Madonna gave birth to three cubs, two females and one male. The father of the cubs is Tigerwoods.[13]

Recently on 20 November 2015, two new South China tiger cubs have been born at Laohu Valley. The mother is Cathay and the father is King Henry. With the birth of these cubs, 20 South China tigers in total are in the care of Save China's Tigers within the Laohu Valley Reserve – more than 20% of the world population of the world's most critically endangered tiger.[14] However, a year later in February 2016, one of two South China tiger cubs recently born in late 2015 died, leaving 19 South China tigers in the reserve.[15]

Obstacles

Stud Tiger 327 with blesbuck carcass

A large difficulty faced by the project is the limited gene pool for South China tigers – all of the South China tigers in Chinese zoos are descended from only 6 individuals caught in the 1950s.[16]

The WWF says that the money is being spent in the wrong place and that the Amur tiger has a better chance of survival.[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ Overview | Save China's Tigers
  2. ^ YouTube – CBS News on saving China's tigers
  3. ^ Caroline Fraser, Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), p. 356.
  4. ^ Jennifer Foote, "Trying to Take Back the Planet," Newsweek, 5 February 1990.
  5. ^ Michael Soulé and Reed Noss, "Rewilding and Biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation," Wild Earth 8 (Fall 1998) 19-28.
  6. ^ Soule and Noss, "Rewilding and Biodiversity," p. 22.
  7. ^ NSPCA suit against SCT
  8. ^ Rare tigers raised in Africa to be rewilded in China
  9. ^ Liu, Cecily (16 October 2010). "Rewilded: Saving the South China Tiger". Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 27 August 2011.
  10. ^ Blandy, Fran (13 December 2007). "South China tiger finds hope in South Africa". Retrieved 27 August 2011.
  11. ^ "Save China's Tigers – Hope's Story". Retrieved 27 August 2011.
  12. ^ http://www.laohuvalleyreserve.org/background/[permanent dead link]
  13. ^ "Endangered South China Tigress gives birth in SA – South Africa – The Good News". 2 September 2008. Archived from the original on 2 September 2008. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  14. ^ "Two New Beautiful Cubs!". Savechinastigers.org. 20 November 2015. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  15. ^ Kit Chellel (23 February 2016). "The South China Tiger Is Functionally Extinct. Stuart Bray Has 19 of Them". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
  16. ^ http://english.savechinastigers.org/node/243
  17. ^ "Tiger finance, a banker's effort to fund survival". Reuters. 16 February 2011. Retrieved 29 November 2019.

External links

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