Word: china
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...Once the wilderness is complete, the tricky part begins: breeding the tigers to inhabit it. The last remaining South China tigers could die out within a few generations unless their genes are supplemented with those from other subspecies. It is not an image China's propagandists will want to project: a captive population of "Chinese" tigers, enfeebled by decades of inbreeding and reliant on genes from, say, a Vietnamese subspecies before they can survive in the wild. But ultimately, says Tilson, the Chinese will have to accept this hybridization "because it's already been done and they have no other...
...Tilson got an out-of-the-blue call from the SFA inviting him to Beijing. China planned to reintroduce South China tigers to the wild and wanted Tilson to be the lead scientific adviser. In 2006, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the SFA and Tilson's South China Tiger Advisory Office based in Minnesota Zoo, and the long task of reintroducing tigers to the wild began. Tilson now gets red-carpet treatment in Beijing. "Somebody in China has said, 'This is a top-priority project,'" says Bart Nollen, the Dutch managing director of ICE, which is raising...
...Into the Wild Tigers breed easily - they are cats, after all - and some 5,000 are kept on farms across China. The recent SFA directive pledged to better regulate these farms, but not to shut them down. This makes a mockery of China's avowed concern for tigers, say many conservationists. The farms ostensibly make their money from tourists, although some illegally sell tiger meat and parts. How can the same SFA officials who plan to save the South China tigers ignore the fate of thousands of their farm-raised cousins? The authorities argue that if public demand...
...lucrative? By China's own estimate, the traditional-medicine industry has lost an average of $266 million a year since the domestic ban was imposed in 1993. That landmark legislation remains "critical" to the future of wild tigers, says Li Zhang, associate professor of conservation biology at Beijing Normal University. "The Chinese government needs to strengthen its enforcement of the ban," says Zhang...
...Tilson opposes tiger-farming - "The day I see tigers on meat hooks is the day I'm gonna die" - and says many of his SFA colleagues privately oppose it too. He believes that official and popular attitudes in China toward conservation are changing so fast that the country's past record is a poor guide for future actions. "That was then," he insists. "This is now." What China does next could decide whether this is a Year of the Tiger worth celebrating...