A South China tiger. (Xinhua photo/Wei Peiquan)
FUZHOU, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- Hunting is their nature, but now endangered South China tigers, a rare species that can only be seen in zoos, have to be trained to prey on animals as humans are making efforts to release them into the wild.
About two dozens of the captive big cats are taking hunting lessons in a reserve in east China's Fujian Province.
Xinhua reporters witnessed on Friday how well a tiger has mastered the skills when it caught a wild boar. After the boar was sent into the enclosure, the tiger ran after the prey, pounced on it, tussled with the struggling beast and bit it on the neck.
A tiger hunts a wild boar in the Meihua Mountain South China Tiger Breeding Research Center, Fujian. (Xinhua photo/Wei Peiquan)
No wild South China tiger has been spotted in China since the 1990s. The species, also known as Chinese tiger, are unique to China and are much rarer than giant pandas as today there are no more than 120 South China tigers in the world, all captive.
Re-wilding training is the last step before releasing the tigers into the wild, according to experts in Meihua Mountain South China Tiger Breeding Research Center, Fujian.
"South China tigers used to be the king of the mountain. I hope their roaring will never vanish in the forest, and the species will always roam in the south China land," said Lin Kaixiong, vice director of the research center.
The research center was established in 1998 in Meihua Mountain, an important habitat where wild tigers were still spotted in 1991. In 2000, four conservationists started their protection project with three breeder tigers in the mountain and built the 330-hectare tiger park.
Today, the number of South China tigers in the park has increased from six in 1998 to currently 27, more than half of 50 in the country.
A tiger parent and two cubs. (Xinhua photo/Wei Peiquan)
But breeding is just the first step of the protection project. The park has been transformed into a re-wilding training base in 2010 under the instruction of the State Forestry Administration.
Tigers are kept in the 100-hectare enclosed forest in the park to adapt to the nature, where the free-range predators are trained to go savage. The center also plans to retrieve the tigers which were sent to South Africa for re-wilding training ten years ago.
