The Northeast Tiger An Uncertain Future

On April 23, residents of Baishiwan Town, Mishan City, Heilongjiang Province, found a local northeastern tiger, which was initially determined by professionals to be "most likely a wild northeastern tiger". During the search process, a villager was bitten and taken to the hospital for treatment.

In this incident, the concern is not only the safety of this northeastern tiger and the residents but also the overall survival status of the wild northeastern tiger. In an interview with Xinhua, Feng Limin, deputy director of the Northeast Tiger and Panthera Monitoring and Research Center of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration.

There are currently three relatively independent populations of Northeast tigers (all located in Siberia, Russia or Northeast China), and based on geographic location, the Northeast tiger that entered the village is most likely from the largest Northeast tiger population habitat today Sikhote-Alin region in Russia. It is estimated that 500-550 wild Northeast tigers exist here, accounting for more than 90% of the global total.

In contrast, the number of wild Northeast tigers living in China is much smaller. Although the exact number is difficult to determine, according to the 2019 International Workshop on Transboundary Conservation of Tigers and Leopards, there are about 27 wild Northeast Tigers remaining in China.

On the other hand, according to 2016 data, the number of captive-bred tigers in China exceeds 6,000, more than half of which are Northeast tigers. The huge number gap between the two also reflects the hidden crisis in the conservation of endangered animals.

In January 2016, Yan Xie took some volunteers to clean up illegal hunting tools in the habitat of the Northeast tiger in Hunchun, Jilin. The knee-deep snow made it difficult for them to travel, and the wire twisted sets and rudimentary cast iron hunting clips were hidden in more secluded areas of the forest. Kneeling in the snow was not an easy task, but they had to do it.

Over the years, Xie Yan has visited all the major nature reserves where the Northeast tigers are found, and although they regularly clean the mountains of hunting tools every year, every other year they go back and the snares and hunting clips appear again. At this time, the reserve was chilly, the seized wire and hunting clips were piled up there colder than ice, and the coniferous forest was permeated with blinding sunlight and had a crispness.

As a national-level protected animal, the endangered wild Northeast tiger is difficult to develop rapidly in a short period. They have very high requirements for their habitat environment. The territory of a female tiger in the breeding stage ranges from 450 km2 or more, up to thousands of km2.

The size of the territory varies depending on the number of prey within this range. In the case of the Merganser, for example, there must be at least 500 ungulates of similar size to the Merganser in the area to stably support a large Northeastern tiger. Male tigers generally occupy the territorial range of three to five females.

However, based on the existing prey population, the area of the Jilin Hunchun Northeast Tiger National Nature Reserve can only accommodate about 10 tigers. To gradually increase the population, it is necessary not only to find ways to increase the number of active prey in the area but also to further expand the area of the reserve.