Minnesota Zoo

Recovery of South China Tigers

Overview

The story of the South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) is among the most compelling, if tragic, conservation stories in Asia. The progenitor of all modern tigers, it is now the most threatened cat in the world: It is extinct in China’s forests and near extinction in China’s zoos. Despite this impending tragedy, the South China tiger remains China’s most powerful cultural icon of wilderness.

Since 2000, the Minnesota Zoo has worked hand-in-hand with the Department of Wildlife Management in the State Forestry Administration (SFA) of China to explore options for the future recovery of this critically endangered subspecies. As Asia’s dominant predator, tigers need vast areas that support abundant prey living in productive forest ecosystems.

The long-term goal of the full project is to restore the forest ecosystem and return free-ranging self-sustaining populations of South China tigers and their prey at forest reserves in south-central China while sharply reducing threats to the globally threatened species that now occupy the reserves. This is a bold plan China is committed to implementing.

What we are proposing is the improbable, if not impossible, dream – the first large-scale recovery of tigers in the wild in Asia.

China Zoos
In mid-1994, the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens (CAZG) invited the International Union for Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission’s Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) to assist in the development of a South China tiger captive management program. At that time the International Tiger Studbook listed 36 living South China tigers, with no births reported since 1985. Studbook pedigrees indicated that the captive population was derived from six wild caught founders, and no new founders had been brought into captivity since 1971.

In early-1995, CBSG formed a team of tiger zoo specialists, coordinated by the Minnesota Zoo, to visit the four primary Chinese zoos holding South China tigers. This effort resulted in the development of the Chinese South China Tiger Studbook and CAZG South China Tiger Master Plan. Later in the year the South China Tiger team returned to train zoo staff at Shanghai, Suzhou, Chongqing and Guangzhou Zoos regarding general medical and management procedures. Physical examinations and biomaterial collection procedures were performed on 22 South China tigers and sperm was cryopreserved from six tigers, leading to the establishment of a Genome Resource Bank for South China tigers.

Wild Tigers
Four years later, the assistant director of China’s Wildlife Management Division from the State Forestry Administration (SFA) asked the Minnesota Zoo to undertake a field assessment of wild South China tigers in south central China. Thus began the Minnesota’s Zoo’s odyssey with the South China tiger.

The situation prevailing at that time was that no wild tigers had been seen by officials in more than 20 years, and the last wild tiger brought into captivity was captured 20 years ago. There were 21 tiger reserves listed by the Chinese Ministry within the presumed historical range of the tiger, but there was no evidence that tigers were still present.

From 2000-2003, Minnesota Zoo staff and Chinese colleagues conducted a comprehensive field survey to determine where and how many tigers remained in the wild. To our great disappointment, we found no evidence of wild tigers after 18 months.

In 2005, SFA appointed the South China Tiger Advisory Office (based at the Minnesota Zoo) to provide the necessary technical and financial support for China’s long-term efforts to restore tigers. In 2006 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to carry out this program between the National Wildlife and Reseach Development Center and the Advisory Office was signed. Our vision is to develop a model for restoring degraded forest ecosystems and recovering wild tiger populations.

Recovery Process
We envision the full recovery of sustainable (over the short term) South China tiger populations as the culmination of a series of overlapping phases, each involving a set of “actions” over several years. The project phases represent sequential steps in the process of ecosystem recovery and tiger reintroduction. Information will be acquired during each phase to fill gaps in our current knowledge and to provide a sound basis for moving on to the next phase.

The first phase will be a “start-up” (planning) phase. The second will be an “initial implementation” phase involving habitat recovery, removal of threats to prey and prey breeding. The third phase involves prey release and monitoring, as well as planning for tiger reintroductions. In the fourth phase, tigers will be moved to facilities inside the reserved and eventually released. The last, or fifth phase, will be an “expansion” phase, in which ecotourism is fully developed, the success of the entire recovery project will be assessed, and other nature reserves will be considered as additional tiger reintroduction sites.

In March 2007, SFA approved several site selection criteria (developed by the Advisory Office) for the reintroduction of wild tiger populations. Work completed in July 2008 confirmed that the Hupingshan-Houhe National Nature Reserve Complex, located in Hunan and Hubei provinces, is the best site meeting all of the criteria agreed upon by SFA. Currently, the Advisory Office is working with our international partners and with our Chinese counterparts to draft a comprehensive “South China Tiger Recovery Concept Plan”.

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