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201203Dec08:08

Prey recov­ery pro­gramme for endan­gered Amur tigers in China, a success

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 03 Decem­ber 2012 | mod­i­fied 04 Decem­ber 2012
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Amurtiger sredneussuriiskyA group of captive-​bred red deer that were released into a nature reserve in North­east China’s Chang­bai Moun­tains four months ago have adapted to the area and suc­cess­fully inte­grated with wild deer, pho­tos and a video clip by forestry work­ers show.

The images mark a major progress in the effort to boost prey pop­u­la­tion for endan­gered wild Amur tigers, part of a tiger recov­ery trial project run by WWF China, the Jilin Provin­cial Forestry Depart­ment and the Wangqing Forestry Bureau.

Three indi­vid­u­als, among a group of five deer that were cap­tured in pho­tos and a short video clip, were iden­ti­fied as captive-​bred red deer (Cervus ela­phus). Another was believed to be wild, but the remain­ing deer could not be iden­ti­fied due to its posi­tion in the pictures.

This is an indi­ca­tion that the released deer have set­tled in the wild
Shi Quan­hua, pro­gramme offi­cer at WWF China’s North­east field office »

“The merger of captive-​bred deer with wild group is con­ducive to pop­u­la­tion growth in the wild. It will also increase the genetic diver­sity of the wild deer, whose den­sity has been extremely low, enhance the pop­u­la­tion dynam­ics and even­tu­ally accel­er­ate the wild pop­u­la­tion recov­ery,” said Shi, who is in charge of repop­u­lat­ing the prey for Amur tigers.

More than 30 hand-​picked captive-​bred red and sika deer were released into the wild in Wangqing on July 29 — Global Tiger Day — to help repop­u­late the area with desir­able prey for Amur tigers.

An impres­sion of how beau­ti­ful this area is:



No space, no food for China’s tigers
Habi­tat degra­da­tion, defor­esta­tion, poach­ing and a small prey base in the country’s north­east have led the wild tiger pop­u­la­tion to decline from an esti­mated 200 to about 20 today within the past five decades. Wild Amur tigers in China are mostly con­fined to the Chang­bai Moun­tains area in Jilin Province and Wanda Moun­tains in Hei­longjiang Province.


The adja­cent forested habi­tat of the Russ­ian Far East holds a sig­nif­i­cantly larger pop­u­la­tion, between 430500 tigers. Recent sight­ings show that the pop­u­la­tion is slowly mov­ing across the Chi­nese bor­der and into the country’s Wanda and Chang­bai moun­tains, part of the Wangqing Nature Reserve.

A recent WWF-​backed sur­vey shows that the lack of prey is a major hur­dle in sup­port­ing the set­tle­ment of tigers in North­east China. The same sur­vey shows that the num­ber of ungu­late ani­mals in the Chang­bai area — espe­cially favored prey such as red deer and sika deer — is too low to sup­port the recov­ery of the Amur tiger population.

The future of Amur tigers can only be secured if its prey pop­u­la­tion is given time to recover. That’s the cru­cial first step
(Dr. Zhu Jiang, head of WWF-China’s North­east Pro­gramme Office)

“The images show that it is pos­si­ble to increase the prey stock by releas­ing captive-​bred deer into the wild. As the trial project devel­ops, WWF China is keen to pro­mote the model across the entire Chang­bai Moun­tains area to accel­er­ate the restora­tion of a healthy and com­plete eco­log­i­cal sys­tem. That would con­tribute to the efforts toward the goal of dou­bling the pop­u­la­tion of wild Amur tigers by 2020,” said Zhu.

Deputy direc­tor of the Wangqing Forestry Bureau, Tang Lijun, said the author­ity is to strengthen law enforce­ment on wildlife pro­tec­tion and enhance its coop­er­a­tion with WWF China, espe­cially on explo­ration on recov­ery of ungu­late ani­mals’ pop­u­la­tion, as part of its com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing bet­ter liv­ing con­di­tions for Amur tigers. WWF-​China and its part­ners are car­ry­ing out a num­ber of con­ser­va­tion mea­sures to save the Amur tiger. These include help­ing ungu­late pop­u­la­tions such as wild boar and roe deer to recover; stop­ping poach­ing by help­ing local author­i­ties carry out anti-​poaching activ­i­ties; and increas­ing and con­nect­ing pro­tected tiger habi­tats so tigers can safely move from one area to another.


An arti­cle well worth read­ing, about a Chi­nese hunter/​poacher who became a for­est game­keeper, has been pub­lished on Novem­ber 30 in the China Daily. Do not for­get to view the article’s accom­pa­ny­ing pic­tures.

One tiger needs to eat the equiv­a­lent of a medium size deer every week to sur­vive and with­out ade­quate food, the tiger pop­u­la­tion rapidly declines.


The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at WWF Global. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.
(Source: WWF Global News, 03.12.2012)
Tags: tiger | Amur tiger | China | prey | WWF
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Goal: 7000 tigers in the wild

Tiger range countries map

Tiger map” (CC BY 2.5) by Sander­son et al., 2006.

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