Yahoo News 8 Feb 10;
BEIJING (AFP) – Fewer than 50 wild tigers remain in China, a conservation group said Monday, voicing hope that the Year of the Tiger would not be the last for the endangered cats.
Xie Yan, director of the China programme for the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), said that just 20 years ago tigers still roamed across large swathes of China.
But based on data from the year 2000, there are only around 15 Bengal tigers left in Tibet, 10 Indochinese tigers in China's southwest, and around 20 Siberian tigers in the northeast, she told reporters.
And the South China tiger may already be extinct. According to the international conservation group WWF, none have been spotted in the wild since the late 1970s. In the 1950s, there were around 4,000.
Degradation of the animal's habitat and poaching of the tiger and its prey are blamed for its rapid disappearance.
China banned international trade in tiger bones and related products in 1993, but completely stamping out poaching and illegal trade has been a challenge due to weak law enforcement, experts say.
"Tiger conservation has been depressing for many years, (numbers) keep dropping and dropping," Xie said.
"But last year is the first year I've felt a lot of confidence from the support of the central government, the State Forestry Administration, and the local governments," she added.
"We see improvement in the management of nature reserves, we see the understanding of local communities, so I hope the tiger year will be the turning point for tiger conservation in China," she said, referring to the Chinese Year of the Tiger which starts on February 14.
China was among 13 Asian countries which last month pledged to double the number of wild tigers by the year 2022 and called for the protection of habitats to save the animals from extinction.
The global wild tiger population is estimated to be at an all-time low of 3,200, down from an estimated 20,000 in the 1980s and 100,000 a century ago.
Xie said the greatest hope for tigers in China was in the country's extreme northeast, which borders on Russia where hundreds of Siberian tigers live in the wild.
Authorities in the northeast are implementing several measures to protect the animal and one nature reserve in Jilin province has launched a tiger tourism programme, she said.
The Hunchun Nature Reserve started an annual tiger festival last year, and has plans to develop eco-tourism further with possible excursions into the wild, said Xie.
Fewer Than 50 Wild Tigers Left In China: Expert
Ben Blanchard, PlanetArk 9 Feb 10;
BEIJING - China has an estimated 50 or fewer tigers left living in the wild, but efforts to stabilize one population in the bleak northeast are starting to pay off, a conservationist said on Monday.
Tigers once roamed huge swathes of China, right up to the now booming east coast. Their population has collapsed due to habitat destruction on the back of rapid economic development and poaching for tiger products to use in traditional medicine.
About 10 still live in the southwestern province of Yunnan, some 15 in Tibet, and 20 or so in northwestern Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, said Xie Yan, China Country Program Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The South China Tiger is probably already extinct, she told the Foreign Correspondents Club of China, ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Tiger, which starts on Sunday.
"The number of wild tigers left in China is very depressing," Xie said. "We have less than 50 individuals in the wild. The populations in Tibet and in the south are still dropping.
"The northeast tiger is now stable, and maybe increasing a little, but the number is still very small," she added.
SKIN AND BONES TRADE
Conservationists say the trade in skin and bones is booming in countries such as China, which has banned the use of tiger parts in medicine but where everything from fur and whiskers to eyeballs and bones are still used.
Skins sell as rugs and cloaks on the black market, fetching up to $20,000 for a single pelt.
Activists say tough laws and occasional well-publicized clampdowns cannot compensate for a crucial problem -- the lack of strong and consistent enforcement.
Barely 3,500 tigers are estimated to be roaming wild across 12 Asian countries and Russia, compared with about 100,000 a century ago, conservationists say.
In December, a Yunnan court sentenced a man to 12 years in jail for killing and eating what may have been the last wild Indochinese tiger in China.
The Indochinese tiger is also on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 left in the forests of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar.
Xie said the Tibetan and Yunnan tigers have the bleakest futures, as their populations are both tiny and isolated.
The northeast tigers, though small in number in China, are far more numerous just across the border in Russia, where around 500 still live in an area with a far lighter human presence.
"We think that the best hope for wild tigers in China is in the northeast, because it is connected to the bigger population in Russia," she added.
"The rest of the populations are too small and not connected," Xie said of the Yunnan and Tibet tigers.
(Editing by Alex Richardson)
