'Tigergate' Stirs Emotions over Decline of China's Wildlife

BEIJING — For conservationists, the news was exceptional. Chinese officials announced last fall that at least one South China Tiger, a species not seen in the wild for more than 20 years, still roamed the country's forests.

But almost as soon as the forestry department of China's central Shaanxi province released photographs of the animal, the story began to unravel.

People posting to Internet chat rooms pointed out that the tiger looked identical to one in a popular Chinese New Year poster and could have been digitally added to the photographs. Journalists argued that a tiger was unlikely to sit still for 20 minutes, the time the local government says a farmer took to shoot 40 digital images of the animal.

A panel of prominent zoologists, photographers and criminal detectives convened by a Chinese Web site analyzed the images and declared them fake. Among other clues, they pointed out that the tiger holds the same posture in every photograph, grass around its footprints is undisturbed and its eyes reflect no light.

Instead of offering hope that China is improving conservation efforts, the incident — dubbed "Tigergate" by China's media — has highlighted how economic development often trumps environmental protection.

Pollution, population growth and development have had "a huge impact on wildlife," said Hu Huijian, a professor at the South China Institute of Endangered Animals in Guangzhou. "There's not much true wilderness left."

In China, 83 species of mammals, 86 bird species and 60 kinds of fish are on the verge of extinction in China, according to the World Conservation Union, a network of hundreds of governments and nonprofit organizations.

The plight of the South China Tiger — one of six remaining tiger subspecies worldwide — is typical. Experts believe the South China Tiger is "functionally extinct" because there are too few wild animals to reproduce.

Conservationists argue that Shaanxi officials may have put economic gain ahead of environmental protection by staging the photographs to attract funding.

"Some people think local officials wanted money from the central government to set up a nature reserve," said Xu Hongfa, China director of Traffic, a nonprofit group that works to curb the trade of endangered animals.

"Most people think it can't be a real tiger since there aren't any tigers in that area (historically)," he said.

Shaanxi forestry officials said a hunter took the photographs in October and have defended the images as genuine. But other Chinese authorities have backed away from the controversy.

An editorial in the People's Daily – the mouthpiece newspaper of the Communist Party – accused Shaanxi officials of "being too anxious to announce the authenticity of the photographs" and "seeking material benefits."

In the 1800s, wild tigers lived in much of China. But as China's population has surged and its economy has grown roughly seven fold since the 1980s, the tigers' habitat has been squeezed and fragmented.

Hunting has also been a problem. In the 1950s, when scientists estimated China's South China Tiger population at over 4,000, the Communist government preached a mantra of controlling nature and rewarded farmers for killing tigers because they sometimes attacked livestock.

Beijing outlawed hunting tigers in 1979, but demand for tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicines has fueled poaching. A recent report by Traffic called the illegal trade in tiger bone, traditionally used as a pain reliever, a "primary threat" to an estimated 2,500 wild adult tigers worldwide.

While "there may be a few individuals left in the wild ... it is generally accepted that the South China Tiger is functionally extinct" the report said.

If the photographs are confirmed fake, some conservationists said the debate has done some good by raising interest in saving dozens of Amur Tigers living along China's border with Russia and a small population of Bengal Tigers in Yunnan province.

"There are some real tigers so there is a possibility that China can recover their wild tiger populations," said Mahendra Shrestha, director of the Washington D.C.-based Save the Tiger Fund.

"But we're hearing that biodiversity and conservation are lagging behind in the economic race," he said.