A seven-year-old tigress gave birth to a female cub on July 25, 2011, which was the first successful breeding of an Amur tiger in the wild in China. In this case the wild is a huge fenced area, where they prepare and train the animals for the ‘real thing’. This soft release method of reintroducing captive bred animals in the wild has been successful for reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone Park in the USA.
This cub, now one and a half years old, will play the leading role in the wild breeding plan of the next-generation tigers
Liu Dan, chief engineer of the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Garden »The adolescent female is currently over 70 cm long and weights more than 50 kg. Its physical agility and cold resistance ability is superior to its peers due to wild training, Liu Dan, chief engineer of the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Garden, said. A male Amur tiger will join the female tiger in the free-roaming area.
Breeding and living in the wild is key for the tigers to familiarise themselves with the rough conditions in the wild to be able to return to the mountains. The wild breeding of the next-generation Amur tigers is another attempt to restore the tigers’ wild nature and is crucial in protecting the species, according to Liu Dan.
Amur tigers are one of the world’s rarest mammal species. Only 300 are believed to be living in the wild, with 20 in northeast China.
The Siberian Tiger Park was established in 1986. It supports the world’s largest breeding facility for Amur tigers. The park is located northwest of Harbin, occupying an area of 144 hectares. On the premises there are over 500 purebred Amur tigers, of which about 100 specimens are on display for visitors. In addition, visitors can view white tigers, lions, lynx, leopards, pumas and Bengal tigers.
In China the park is considered an ecotourist attraction providing beautiful scenery, making it an ideal place for holiday and leisure. When reading several blogs of people with a more western point of view there is some criticism about the way the animals are fed, and the conduct of Chinese visitors. Especially the Park’s feeding enrichment is something that has been abandoned by many zoos of the zoo community worldwide, such as members of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA). Visitors of the Park in Heilongjiang can buy live animals, such as ducks, chickens and cows, that will be set free in the tigers’ enclosures to provide visitors the unique opportunity of seeing tigers prey upon these live animals. Live feeding is necessary when training a captive-bred animal to recognise prey, and learn how to catch and kill it, but otherwise it is less acceptable in most countries.
This is how live feeding for entertainment looks like (not a pleasant sight!):
In China the park is considered an ecotourist attraction providing beautiful scenery, making it an ideal place for holiday and leisure. When reading several blogs of people with a more western point of view there is some criticism about the way the animals are fed, and the conduct of Chinese visitors. Especially the Park’s feeding enrichment is something that has been abandoned by many zoos of the zoo community worldwide, such as members of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA). Visitors of the Park in Heilongjiang can buy live animals, such as ducks, chickens and cows, that will be set free in the tigers’ enclosures to provide visitors the unique opportunity of seeing tigers prey upon these live animals. Live feeding is necessary when training a captive-bred animal to recognise prey, and learn how to catch and kill it, but otherwise it is less acceptable in most countries.
This is how live feeding for entertainment looks like (not a pleasant sight!):
(Source: China.org.cn environment news, 18.12.2012; TravelChinaGuide.com; tripadvisor.co.uk)