The Controversial Ancestry Of The South China Tiger

[ramonmercado]

I think this belongs here as it refers to anargument re species and sub-species.

What immortal hand or eye?

Feb 22nd 2007 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition


The controversial ancestry of the South China tiger

FEW peoples are as proud of their uniqueness as are the Chinese. Many feel the same way about one of their national emblems: the South China tiger. So two Americans who have questioned its pedigree have created quite a stir.

Reuters


Incest is best

In 2004 Stephen O'Brien, head of genetics at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, published the results of a 20-year study into the species. His findings concluded that of the five beasts he sampled, labelled in the Chinese zoos where they were kept as South China tigers, only two were of “unique lineage”. Three were no different genetically from the Indochinese tiger, a separate sub-species endemic to Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos.

His study has great bearing on the animal's future. Hunted to the brink of extinction during Mao Zedong's “anti-pest” campaigns, the South China tiger is the rarest of five tiger sub-species, and there have been no confirmed sightings in the wild for more than 30 years. Many experts think the 68 now kept in Chinese zoos and research centres are the only ones left. These survivors are all the progeny of just two males and four females, and display the lowered fertility and above-average infant mortality that goes with inbreeding.

Mr O'Brien's findings are good news for Ronald Tilson, a conservationist, who advises a national programme to reintroduce the beast into the wild. He recommends setting up two massive reserves in the provinces of Hunan and Guangdong. He now thinks it will be easier to find “free-ranging, healthy, reproducing tigers” to fill them, because there should be no objection to introducing Indochinese specimens into the incest-ridden breeding stock.

Mr Tilson first made himself unpopular with his hosts in 2001. After leading officers from the State Forestry Administration (SFA) on a census of wild South China tigers, he declared that none was left. Many Chinese will take no less kindly to being told the tiger is an undistinguished mongrel, and that miscegenation is the way forward.

The SFA's Wang Weisheng, for example, angrily denies that the South China tiger is extinct in the wild. He cites the example of the Père David's deer. At one time, fewer than 20 of this Chinese ungulate survived—all in the grounds of an English stately home. After a successful breeding programme, thousands now live in Chinese reserves.

Yet neither Mr Wang nor any other Chinese official denies that the South China tiger urgently needs new blood. At a conference last November, Wang Xingjin, of Guangzhou Zoo's South China Tiger Research Programme, admitted the South China tiger was “very probably” extinct in the wild and will certainly disappear, “unless we can find a wild tiger to enter the breeding pool.”

www.economist.com/world/asia/PrinterFri ... id=8742992

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Just came across this. Presumably known about here - what's the connection (if at all)...?

http://www.cfzaustralia.com/2010/11/is-chinas-rare-tiger-fighting-back.html?m=1

 

[James_H]

I've been trying to figure out for a while where if anywhere tigers still exist in China.

I've been to some of their historical ranges and indeed last week saw Tiger parts for sale illegally in a Yunnan market - they must have been from Myanmar, which is nearby (unexpected and depressing). It seems that the South China tigers haven't been seen in the wild for almost 50 years so the idea that they still exist outside of zoos is at best optimistic.

There may be Siberian tigers in the northeast of China.

There's a tiger's pelt in a hong Kong temple: it seems it was out of place (an ABC in fact) when shot and nobody knows where it came from

siobhandaiko.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/the-last-tiger-to-be-shot-in-hong-kong-a-truth-stranger-than-fiction/amp/

 

[markrkingston1]

I've been trying to figure out for a while where if anywhere tigers still exist in China.

I've been to some of their historical ranges and indeed last week saw Tiger parts for sale illegally in a Yunnan market - they must have been from Myanmar, which is nearby (unexpected and depressing). It seems that the South China tigers haven't been seen in the wild for almost 50 years so the idea that they still exist outside of zoos is at best optimistic.

There may be Siberian tigers in the northeast of China.

There's a tiger's pelt in a hong Kong temple: it seems it was out of place (an ABC in fact) when shot and nobody knows where it came from

siobhandaiko.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/the-last-tiger-to-be-shot-in-hong-kong-a-truth-stranger-than-fiction/amp/

I clicked Like but of course I don't like the outcome of your investigations.

China is an increasingly heavily controlled nation (verging on micro-managed in some areas, at least in big cities, from what I have read) and yet it is surprising that the Chinese government allows abuse of its internationally-famous rare animals to occur. So sad.

 

[James_H]

I clicked Like but of course I don't like the outcome of your investigations.

China is an increasingly heavily controlled nation (verging on micro-managed in some areas, at least in big cities, from what I have read) and yet it is surprising that the Chinese government allows abuse of its internationally-famous rare animals to occur. So sad.

China has very strict laws but is not always able to enforce them very well.

 

[James_H]

‘Wounded rare tiger seeks human help’ at remote border post on Russian-Chinese frontier

The predator - believed to be at least 15 years old and a senior citizen of the big cat world - killed and ate two guard dogs at the frontier post with China.

But it refused to move on, and in the words of Sergey Aramilev, general director of the Amur Tiger Centre, the animal had came to humans ‘for help’.