Save China's Tigers (SCT) is an international charitable foundation based in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

(Office in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

) which aims to save the

big cats The term "big cat" is typically used to refer to any of the five living members of the genus ''Panthera'', namely the tiger, lion, jaguar, leopard, and snow leopard. Despite enormous differences in size, various cat species are quite similar ...

of China from extinction. It focuses on the Chinese

tiger The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living cat species and a member of the genus ''Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily preys on ...

s (

South China tigers The South China Tigers is a professional rugby union team from Hong Kong that plays in the Global Rapid Rugby competition. The team was launched in 2018 to participate in the inaugural Global Rapid Rugby season. For the naming of the team, S ...

). It also has branches in

Mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

and

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

Aims

According to Save China's Tigers the organization's vision is to raise awareness of the plight of the Chinese tiger and to strive for its protection and preservation through public education, introduction and experimentation with advanced

conservation Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws. Conservation may also refer to: Environment and natural resources * Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...

models in China and abroad, and raising funds to support these initiatives. Another aim is to act as a liaison for all those organizations concerned with the conservation of China's

wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted ...

, sustainable development,

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

and

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

. According to Save China's Tigers the organizations goal is to reverse the fate of the

South China tiger The South China tiger is a population of the '' Panthera tigris tigris'' subspecies that is native to southern China. The population mainly inhabited the Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. It has been listed as Critically Endange ...

from the brink of

extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

by taking them out of zoos, breeding them, letting them regain their hunting abilities, and reintroducing them back to China's wild.

History

"Save China's Tigers" was founded in 2000 by Li Quan.

Rewilding

Origin

The word "

rewilding Rewilding may refer to: *Rewilding (conservation biology), the return of habitats to a natural state **Rewilding Europe Rewilding Europe is a non-profit organisation based in Nijmegen, Netherlands, working to create rewilded landscapes through ...

" was coined by conservationist and activist

Dave Foreman William David Foreman (October 18, 1946 – September 19, 2022) was an American environmentalist and author, he was a co-founder of Earth First! and a prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement. Early life and education William ...

, first occurring in print in 1990. The concept was further defined and expanded by conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss in a paper published in 1998. According to Soulé and Noss, rewilding is a conservation method based on "cores, corridors, and carnivores."

The rewilding process

In order to be successfully reintroduced into a wild environment, tigers must know how to hunt prey and have to be able to defend themselves. Once in captivity, an animal will gradually lose its ability to survive in the wild, and will likely die if released. Thus Save China's Tigers started a rehabilitation programme to help captive tigers regain their survival skills. Rehabilitation steps taken by the project include feeding the tigers with carcasses of small game. Once the tigers are eating the new food items, live animals similar to those taken dead will be occasionally introduced into large hunting camps. The

SPCA A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is a common name for non-profit animal welfare organizations around the world. The oldest SPCA organization is the RSPCA, which was founded in England in 1824. SPCA organizations operate i ...

claimed that this process was cruel to the prey, but the South African courts refused to issue an interdict.

The Laohu Valley Reserve

The Laohu Valley Reserve (LVR) is a roughly 350 square kilometer private reserve near

Philippolis Philippolis is a town in the Free State province of South Africa. The town is the birthplace of many South African celebrities including the writer and intellectual Sir Laurens van der Post, actress Brümilda van Rensburg and Springboks rugby ...

in the Free State. It has been created with the aims of rewilding captive-born South China tigers and for South African biodiversity conservation in general. LVR was created in 2002 out of 17 defunct sheep farms, and efforts to return the overgrazed land to natural status are ongoing. The South China tigers at LVR for rewilding are kept confined to a tiger-proof camp complex of roughly 1.8 square kilometers, with other areas of the reserve being used to protect native South African species. The word "laohu" is a Chinese term for tiger.

The tigers involved

In April 2014 Madonna gave birth to three cubs, two females and one male. The father of the cubs is Tigerwoods. Recently on 20 November 2015, two new South China tiger cubs have been born at Laohu Valley. The mother is Cathay and the father is King Henry. With the birth of these cubs, 20 South China tigers in total are in the care of Save China's Tigers within the Laohu Valley Reserve – more than 20% of the world population of the world's most critically endangered tiger. However, a year later in February 2016, one of two South China tiger cubs recently born in late 2015 died, leaving 19 South China tigers in the reserve.

Obstacles

A large difficulty faced by the project is the limited gene pool for South China tigers – all of the South China tigers in Chinese zoos are descended from only 6 individuals caught in the 1950s. The WWF says that the money is being spent in the wrong place and that the

Amur tiger The Siberian tiger or Amur tiger is a population of the tiger subspecies '' Panthera tigris tigris'' native to the Russian Far East, Northeast China and possibly North Korea. It once ranged throughout the Korean Peninsula, but currently inhabi ...

has a better chance of survival.

References

External links

Save China's Tiger homepage, information regarding the rewilding project

A video of the rare South China tiger hunting, the tigress in this video is Cathay from the Save China's Tiger re-wilding project

A video of a South China tiger named Hope tackling a blesbuck

Keystone Progress of the Save China's tiger project

Weekly Tiger Diaries, updated information of the South China tigers posted every week
{{Authority control Charities based in Hong Kong International environmental organizations History of South Africa Conservation projects Cat conservation organizations Animal welfare organisations based in Hong Kong