China only has 45 wild tigers

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) claims China only has about 45 tiger individuals alive in its natural environment.

A Chinese tiger.WWF believes that this subspecies of tiger is extinct.Photo: tigerdata.info .

Xie Yan - director of the WCS tiger conservation program in China - told AFP that about 20 years ago, a huge boom occurred in large areas in China. But surveys from 2000 to the present show that there are only about 15 Bengal tigers left in Tibet, 10 Indochinese tigers in the southwest and about 20 Siberian tigers in the northeast.

But the more sad thing is that the Chinese tiger - one of the tiger subspecies originating in China - may be extinct. The International Nature Conservation Fund (WWF) said no Chinese male tiger has been found since the late 1970s. By the 1950s the number of Chinese male tigers was about 4,000.

Hunting, deforestation, the decline in the number of prey are the reasons why tigers disappear quickly.

China has banned the sale of tiger bones and tiger related products since 1993, but the poaching and illegal trading of tiger products has not been relieved. The main reason, according to experts, is that there are no strong legal measures.

"Tiger conservation efforts have been strengthened in the past few years, but their numbers are still falling," Xie commented.

Last month, China and 12 other countries pledged to double the number of wild tigers before 2022. They also called for protection of tiger habitats to prevent extinction.

The number of wild tigers in the world today is only about 3,200 - the lowest in history. In the 1980s their number was about 20,000.