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  Yahoo News 12 Oct 07
Endangered China tiger caught on camera after 30 years

Yahoo News 12 Oct 07
Rare Chinese tiger spotted for first time in decades

A rare South China tiger has been spotted in the wild for the first time in decades, surprising researchers who feared the subspecies was extinct outside of captivity, state media said Friday.

Experts have confirmed a photograph taken on October 3 by a farmer in Shaanxi province was of a young wild South China tiger, the most critically endangered of all tiger subspecies, Xinhua news agency said.

Experts have said no more than 20 to 30 of the tigers were believed to remain in the wild, but none have been spotted in decades, with many fearing that a small number of captive-born tigers were all that remained.

The population of the South China tiger, the smallest tiger subspecies, was believed to number 4,000 in the early 1950s.

But numbers were greatly reduced after Communist leader Mao Zedong labelled the elusive felines "pests" and ordered an extermination campaign.

The last wild South China tiger sighting was recorded in 1964.

The animal has also fallen victim to decimation of overpopulated China's natural environment and the elimination of its natural prey, according to the US-based Save the Tiger Fund.

The South China Tiger is one of six remaining tiger subspecies. Three subspecies, the Bali, Java, and Caspian tigers have all become extinct since the 1940s, according to the fund.

The tiger's traditional habitat is southern and central China.

Yahoo News 12 Oct 07
Endangered China tiger caught on camera after 30 years

A South China tiger has been caught on camera by a hunter-turned-farmer, the first confirmed sighting for 30 years of a sub-species experts had feared was extinct in the wild, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

Zhou Zhenglong took over 70 snaps of the young tiger lying in the grass near a cliff in a mountainous part of central China. Experts confirmed the images showed one of the elusive cats.

Villagers from his home area had reported several sightings of the tigers, paw-prints and droppings, but none had been confirmed for decades, the official news agency said.

"There has been no record of the survival of wild south China tigers in more than 30 years, and it was only an estimate that China still had 20 to 30 such wild tigers," Xinhua quoted Lu Xirong, head of a South China tiger research team saying.

In the early 1950s an estimated 4,000 of the tiger subspecies, one of the world's smallest and the only one native to central and southern China, roamed the country, but its habitat has been squeezed by the country's rapid economic growth.

The Forestry Department of Shaanxi province, where the tiger was sighted, plans to set up a special protection area for them, Xinhua said.
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