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Some Pictures!!

Spirit Lion wrote:

That's interesting, but I have a question, since all the South China tigers in captivity today are descended from 6 wild caught individuals, do they show any effects of inbreeding?

Well, there was an attempt to try to create a sperm bank for South China Tigers but it was found that extracted sperm were inactive so this is also an effect of Inbreeding. Another effect is the high mortality rate of South China Tiger cubs compared to other Genetically diversed tiger subspecies. And of course, low birth rate(many south china tiger embryo are stillborn) and also infertility.

Inbreeding also weakens the gene pool, and tigers are born with birth defects and mutations. This is similar to white tigers, we know that all white tigers are inbred tiger specimens but there are some white tigers in various zoos that look healthy, they look healthy but we know that they are crossed-eye and have other various illness that we cannot see with our naked eye.

Inbreeding is really a huge problem, but scientists and conservationists have tried various methods to reduce the effects of inbreeding, 1 such method is fast breeding which is what Save China's Tigers is doing, once the cub is 3months old, Cathay would be mated to either 327 or Tigerwoods again to breed fast.

Another method is Introduce genes of another subspecies, in this case, the indochinese tiger since they are very similar genetical to South China Tigers, but as you know i do not support hybridizing pure tigers so this 2nd method is perhaps what we call the last resort and will be only used under the worst case scenario.

Spirit Lion wrote:

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That is unfortunate, it seems the level of inbreeding with South Chinese tigers is similar if not worst than what is found in Asiatic lions. However, I do not think the level of inbreeding is enough to wipeout the whole subspecies

Well, Leon, something that most people do not know except Chinese Zookeepers and staff of Save China's Tigers is going to let you reconsider what you just said.

Leon, do you know that for the past 2 years, no South China Tiger have been born in captivity(zoos) in China? None of the South China tigers in China Zoo seems interested in mating at all. And what experts have predicted seems to be coming true, experts have predicted that Captive South China tiger would be so inbred that they stop producing cubs and finally become extinct.
That is why when this tiger cub is born in Africa, it is worth celebrating and it proved that South China Tigers are better off in their natural environment and can breed better there.

if tigers could be found in the wild and their genes transferred to captive tiger, it would widen the gene pool, but that is wishful thinking at best.

Agreed completely, this is just not very possible. Considering the fact that South China Tigers have not been sported in the wild for 3 decades and the only hope we have of existing wild south china tiger is dashed, i am talking about the South China tiger photo incident.

Well, it seems hard to even spot a wild south china tiger, let alone capture them to breed in captivity.

Spirit Lion wrote:

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Well, Leon, something that most people do not know except Chinese Zookeepers and staff of Save China's Tigers is going to let you reconsider what you just said.

Leon, do you know that for the past 2 years, no South China Tiger have been born in captivity(zoos) in China? None of the South China tigers in China Zoo seems interested in mating at all. And what experts have predicted seems to be coming true, experts have predicted that Captive South China tiger would be so inbred that they stop producing cubs and finally become extinct.
That is why when this tiger cub is born in Africa, it is worth celebrating and it proved that South China Tigers are better off in their natural environment and can breed better there.

No I had no idea, that this was taking place; that's horrible. Something best be done fast before the individuals in captivity are too old to breed. Its great to hear that a birth finally occurred in South Africa, but how many tigers are at the facility at the current moment?

There is only 4 South China Tigers(excluding the cub) currently involved in the Save China's Tigers Project. Actually the Project is delayed because of Hope's death and the birth of the cubs was supposed to be in early 2006, not late2007. A few weeks After Hope died, his chosen mate, Cathay became sexually matured and at that time the Staff of Save China's Tigers had to deal with many stuffs including the autopsy report of Hope and answers to Media, and after a few months time, they decided to allow Cathay to get into Madonna and Tigerwood's enclosure in hope that Tigerwoods would mate with Cathay, but Tigerwoods was too young at that time and not matured enough to produce cubs yet so Save China's Tiger went to request for a new male Tiger, which is 327 and he arrived at Mid2007, but just like his other captive counterparts in China Zoos, it cannot adapt to the wilderness, having lived the first 4years of his life in cages, he is so used to concrete that he doesn't like to step on sand and grass. Other tigers of SCT hates cages, and will avoid then, but 327 always sleeps inside his cage despite having a large natural environment at his disposal.

Another bad thing about 327 is that he doesn't seem interested in mating, he did try to mount Cathay a few times, but it doesn't last long before he lost the interest. He has lived alone in a cage for 4years and now he doesn't even know how to react with other tigers. The strength was that 327 was a very strong and fertile stud tiger but his weakness was that he doesn't want to mate. He is more interested in eating wildebeest carcass than play with other tigers.\line\line So Cathay was introduced to the Younger Tigerwoods again, and they mated several times and surprisingly Cathay got pregnant, the Pregnancy was only confirmed 2weeks ago when the belly became real obvious, and there Tigerwoods junior(not really his real name) was born. So the father is Tigerwoods. Tigerwoods is also a very healthy and strong tiger who has been throught re-wilding training since young and he is able to hunt(unlike 327).

Something interesting is that Save China's Tigers was suppose to obtain 7-10South China Tigers from China zoos, but because the last 2 years, there were no cubs born, thus they did not rewild more tigers. But it shows tigers breed better under a more natural environment.

Also, I heard about South Chinese tigers in China being "re-wilded" what do you think of that project?

You must be refering to the MeiHuaShan South China Tiger rewilding project in China, if it was efficent and useful, there wouldn't be Save China's Tigers.
I have seen dozens of Chinese Documentaries that is what i call propaganda to the MeiHuaShan Rewilding project and talks about the project as if the Tigers are really being "re-wilded". I will give you a detail summary of what i know about th MeiHuashan SC Tiger rewilding project.
The Meihuashan project is a project who aims to train south china tiger in captivity for their release. The south china tigers were fed live chicken since young and when they are older, they will move to a larger enclosure with a more natural settings. But even this larger enclosure is very packed. 10 -15tigers will be put in the same enclosure because of the limited space in zoos, the tigers are given livestocks to hunt, eg; Goats and Cows. Note that these are domesticated animals and are not sufficient to train the tigers' speed, power and skills which are essential for hunting in the wild. 2ndly, because of the density of the enclosure, tigers became "social" animals and start to hunt together.
The domestic "prey" will be outnumbered and since it is caged with the tigers, there is no escape. This project didn't get much government support and as far as i know, the tigers there are not approved by the government for release. Another fact of the MeiHuaShan rewilding project is that many of their tigers are perhaps more inbred than South China Tigers elsewhere, this is because there was a heroic mother[stud 152] there in MeiHuaShan that gave birth to 49cubs, and all of them are sired by his own brother[stud 142], and 2 of their cubs, KangKang and LeLe mated with each other too, resulting in 3 litters of cubs. This shows how inbred the tigers there are.

I have many videos of the MeiHuaShan rewilding project and most of them involve many tigers pouncing on a domestic stock and that is why i did not upload them onto youtube. I have however uploaded 2 videos of the MeiHuaShan project that only involve a single tiger.
South China Tiger vs Asiatic Black Bear http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjfdls1mMPU\cf1\line
South China Tiger vs Wild Boar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSeJ-fQxYEg\cf1 (requested by akabuto)

Leon if you notice, the title sorta suggest that i am not someone into conservation, but stating the word VS is the only way to gain popularity in Youtube, this is because..Everyone on youtbe is some kind of a Saddist. Anyway, most background music i used are sent from you.
There isn't any doubt that the South China tigers in this project learnt how to kill its prey(neck bite, throat gripe),but they fail to learn many other skills needed for survival in the wild, that includes stalking, hiding in camouflage, social behaviour of wild tigers etc.
That is why Save China's Tigers was needed, Ms Li Quan intially supported the MeiHuaShan rewilding project, but after awhile, she figured out the tigers are not truly rewilded, thus she started Save China's Tigers. Africa was chosen as the place to train the tigers because China did not have enough land or a private reserve set up specially for the rewilding training, but South Africa had land, expertise, resources and wild prey item needed for rewilding Tigers.

The tigers are also have alot of space, Tigerwoods and Madonna are currently in a 9ha camp and 327 a 4ha camp, this amount of space is much more compared to the enclosures the Tigers have back in China. The tigers are also frequently released into a 42ha camp where they can hunt for blesbucks and springboks which are similar in size of the prey they should hunt in China. 42ha is huge! And the prey have more than enough space to escape from the tigers, and the tigers have to learn how to stalk and camouflage in order to catch their prey and Cathay, Hope, Madonna and Tigerwoods have successfully prove that they can indeed hunt.
Here is a video of Cathay hunting a blesbuck in the 42ha camp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTzNY82WJvs
A video of Cathay grabbing a baby ostrich that wandered into her 4ha camp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1CQ75KUbgc
And of course the video of Hope tackling a blesbuck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld0RpYQTVGk
and there still many successful hunts that have not been recorded on film, or haven't been uploaded.

So as a general view, i would say the MeiHuaShan project isn't as efficent as the Save China's Tigers project, but the Save China's Tigers project is much more costly, Li Quan and her Husband Stuart Bray has spent 10million(excluding the 4m scammed by the Varty's) on this project.

Spirit Lion wrote:


First the most obvious question. Once a population of wild tigers is established in South Africa, when is it planed to release them into China. Also, are there any plans implemented to protect tigers in China to prevent them from becoming extinct again in wild.

Ok, actually you got some things wrong. Save China's Tigers has no intention to release South China tigers into the wilderness of Africa at all, Africa is considered only the training ground for the tigers. As i mentioned, China does not have enough wild prey, land and expertise for training tigers while Africa has all of that. That is why South China Tigers are being "borrowed" by Save China's Tigers and imported to Africa. The goal of the project is to train the Tigers that are borrowed from Captivity and breed them and eventually release their semi-wild cubs into China. The tigers are not considered wild, and are fenced off from any healthy ecosystem nearby so that they do not cause any unbalance to native ecosystem. Since Africa is the training ground, then when the China pilot reserve has been established, other generations of Tigers would be trained back in China and not Africa. This is different from John Varty's project because John Varty wishes to release the tigers into the wilderness of Africa(His own private reserve actually, or else he would be sued yet again since crossbred tigers are not allowed to roam the wild anywhere).

Their offspring will also be in such camps and trained how to hunt, and eventually sent back to China and to be finally released. The date set for their release was supposed to be in 2008 to coincide with Beijing Olympic games, but as i mentioned the project was delayed because of Hope's death and the cubs aren't born as early as expected(early 2006) so i think the date of release would be near 2010.

And you don't have to worry about protecting the tigers because if i did not remember wrongly, the establishment of the pilot reserve would be similar to many african safaris, as in you pay a sum of money and you can get on a car and a park ranger would drive you to a place where you can take nice quality photos, so it is really similar to many African safaris. I am not 100percent sure about this though.
You can go on to read the Wikipedia page on Save China's Tigers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_China%27s_Tigers
Don't worry, it is reliable, everything there was typed word by word, by me!

Second are there any updates on John Varty? The money scammed from the project is quite substantial & would pay dividends to the tigers at Save China's Tigers, if they manage to get the money back.

I have not got any update of the court case. But anyway, John Varty didn't dare reply our email, Lol! His assistance, Sunnette replied to me that he will show him the Email, and yet up till now he hasn't reply.. LMAO. Anyway John Varty is now earning lots of money because there are many ignorant people who pay huge sums of money going into his Tiger Canyons Safari to see "wild" tigers in Africa. Look here for more info: www.jvbigcats.co.za

You know what i fear? I am afraid that many people who planned to go to India or other Asian Countries to view wild tigers actually went to John Varty's Safari to look at the tigers in Africa instead because it sounds much more attractive. In such a case, some money needed for Saving wild pure tigers might not be obtained as easily as before.

And third, I remember reading on of your posts a while back and you stated that one of the male tigers was 170 kg. Now I do not have much measurements on wild South Chinese tigers, though I do know of a wild male which weighed almost 150 kg, and another which weighed about 180 kg. I also have some length measurements but that's about it. How large are the males at Save China's Tigers?

In my opinion, the weight of 150kg is the average weight of 10th generation captive-bred south china tiger that are suffering from inbreeding. In fact, all captive south china tigers are suffering from inbreeding and everyone knows inbred animals tend to be smaller than genetic diversed specimens.
Plus South china tigers actually grow larger in its natural environment than in small cages in zoos of china.

Lu said both tigers are now bigger than their brothers and sisters in the Shanghai Zoo.

from: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-10/29/content_386748.htm


^This is refering to 2 of the 10th generation captive bred tigers that are suffering from inbreeding whom is currently rewilding in Africa.
The trainers have been contacting me, and he told me that "stud 327", a south china tiger sent there recently to replace "Hope" is currently 170kg, please note that Stud 327 only moved out of its cage in china 4months ago and was sent to africa thus its size should be considered that of the captive bred smaller tiger.

Another tiger, now around 3years old, Tigerwoods, not fully-grown is now 160kg and is likely to grow larger than 327 in a few months time, it was sent to africa since it was young and it was obvious that it's size is bigger than its brother and sisters, thus the average weight of 150kg for south china tigers is actually not that accurate.

Note that even all these specimens are all inbred specimens, In my opinion, a wild specimen should grow much heavier and larger than them because wild specimens live in natural environment and plus they are genetically diversed.

EDIT:

I disagree that the bear should be allowed in the same area, tigers and bears in the wild would avoid each other.

According to the Chinese documentary about the MeiHuaShan project which i grabbed the video from, well. The narrator says that if the tiger was released, it would have fend for itself and the Asiatic Black bear is one of the South China Tiger's natural enemy, that is they put the Bear with the Tiger to see who will win a fight and if the Tiger won, this means the tiger can fend for itself in the wild.. LOL!

Yeah I meant semi-wild animals, because releasing them into the wild is pointless not to mention risky since that could bring them into conflict the lion

Which is what John Varty is doing. He even stated that he would release lion prides and cheetahs to see the interaction between these big cats.
read this:

It is hoped to recreate Tiger / Cheetah and Tiger / Lion relationships to study the interaction of these Big Cats.

From: http://www.jvbigcats.co.za/research.htm
He is doing all this for experimenting purpose, he did things like letting ron and julie mate to see the effects of inbreeding(i think the main reason is to produce white cubs) and introducing a lion cub into the tiger's litter and next he will be trying to produce white cubs and release them in his private reserve to prove that white tigers can survive in the wild,(more tourist will go there), but what we know about producing white tigers is to let the cubs be inbred in order to have the recessive genes.

though I would think lions have been extirpated in the local region.

Yes, indeed they have been .That land have been home to several defunct sheep farms for a few centuries and no wildlife exist there anymore, but now Save China's Tigers bought the length and is reintroducing wild animals there.(sound like JV's project, but jv actually coped from this)
I

have read, your Wikipage, very nicely done, but it does not answer a key question. Have an area for the tigers been chosen for the tigers yet? Considering the release date for their offspring is about 2-3 years away, I would think that have chosen an area before hand, have they?

Well, i didn't add that because even i am not really informative about that. I asked Ms Li Quan and she told me i could read in detail and download the report on the Homepage, which i tried: http://english.savechinastigers.org/node/175 But i found out the 2 reports cannot be downloaded, and i told another SCT stuff to reupload them and she says she will do it asap but up till now the page has an error.

But if you read that page i posted, it did say 2 pilot reserves have been allocated in China for the release of the Tigers so yes, the area of reserve have indeed been chosen.

John Varty, makes me sick. It is obvious SCT is the better of the two projects, and personally I think what JV is doing is nothing more than a scheme to make money. I am not to worried about people going to his Safari at the current moment. I would expect that the people going there now, are for the most part locals of South Africa. It is not as established as Ranthambore, Chitwan, or Nagarahole, not even close, so I do not think they will have any real trouble from him. It would take him at least a couple of years before he is anywhere close to hurting the bank of those reserves. Hopefully by then, he has already lost the case. I pretty much expected that John Varty was not going to reply to the email because I do not really know what he can say. If he is planing to reply, that's why it is taking him so long; to make up a good excuse!

To me John Varty's project could indeed save tigers, but why did he choose unpure tigers instead of purebred bengals, that is what puzzled me. If he was really into conservation, he will not mind forking out more money and going to India to purchase purebred Bengal tigers that are recorded in the Studbook. What i fear now is that even though he may lose his case, he could still buy a smaller plot of land and have it under his name, in that case he could still release his tigers in that land, this is similar to a zoo and i fear that officials cannot do anything to him in such a case.

The size of the Tigers here are quite impressive, more so than I have previously thought, and it seems that South Chinese tigers are comparable in size to Corbett's tigers. I am fairly sure a large male can reach 9.5 ft which is as big as a average Bengal Tiger. Now about captive animals, Bengal tigers from North India averaged only about 180 kg in the wild but average about 215 kg in the wild so it seems that captive weights are not always a good indicator of wild weights.

Well, something bad is that the trainers of the tigers said this: "We don't have the exact number on their weight and size because to get
that number we need to immobilize them first and that is a big risk to
the tigers.", so all the weights i mentioned is just estimation made by them.

Something surprising is that i always thought that captive tigers are mostly larger than wild tigers,i got this impression from the fact that the largest recorded tigers are from zoos, but i guess i could be wrong.