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| Abbreviation | SCT |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2000 |
| Founder | Li Quan |
| Purpose | Tiger conversation |
Key people | Stuart Bray Brad Nilson [1] Kun (Michael) Shang Heinrich Funck |
| Website | www |
Save China's Tigers (SCT) is an international charitable foundation based in Hong Kong, the United States, and the United Kingdom (headquartered in London) that aims to save the big cats of China from extinction. It focuses on the Chinese tigers (South China tigers). It also has other branches in Mainland China and South Africa.
The organization's primary objective is to raise awareness regarding the vulnerability of the Chinese Tiger, while advocating for its protection and preservation. This mission is pursued through public education, the introduction of advanced conservation models, and experimentation with these models both within China and internationally. Additionally, the organization seeks to secure funding to support these conservation initiatives. Another aim is to act as a liaison for all those organizations concerned with the conservation of China's wildlife, sustainable development, biodiversity, and habitat.
"Save China's Tigers" is a conservation organization founded in 2000 by Li Quan. Li Quan's then-husband, Stuart Bray, who had previously worked as an executive at Deutsche Bank, provided financial support for the organization during its early stages.[ citation needed ]
The word "rewilding" was coined by conservationist and activist Dave Foreman, [2] first occurring in print in 1990. [3] The concept was further defined and expanded by conservation biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss in a paper published in 1998. [4] According to Soulé and Noss, rewilding is a conservation method based on "cores, corridors, and carnivores." [5]
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 claimed that this process was cruel to the prey, but the South African courts refused to issue an interdict. [6]
The Laohu Valley Reserve (LVR) is a roughly 350 square kilometer private reserve near Philippolis in the Free State. [7] 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, [8] [9] [10] 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. [11]
In April 2014 Madonna gave birth to three cubs, two females and one male. The father of the cubs is Tigerwoods. [12]
On 20 November 2015, two South China tiger cubs were born at Laohu Valley. The mother is Cathay and the father is King Henry. The birth of these cubs brought the number of South China tigers within the care of Save China's Tigers in the Laohu Valley Reserve to twenty. At the time, this represented more than 20% of the world population of the world's most critically endangered tiger. [13] However, in February 2016, one of the two cubs died, leaving nineteen South China tigers in the reserve. [14]
A difficulty faced by the project is the limited gene pool for South China tigers – all the South China tigers in Chinese zoos are descended from only six individuals caught in the 1950s. [15]
The WWF says that the money is being spent in the wrong place and that the Amur tiger has a stronger chance of survival over these tigers. [16] [17]
Li accused her former husband, Stuart Bray, of using charitable funds for personal expenses. [18] This was reported in the Daily Mail , which damaged the charity's reputation with the public. However, Stuart Bray was acquitted of misappropriation of charitable funds in a court case decision in October 2014. [18]
The Bengal tiger or Royal Bengal tiger is a population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies and the nominate tiger subspecies. It ranks among the biggest wild cats alive today. It is estimated to have been present in the Indian subcontinent since the Late Pleistocene for about 12,000 to 16,500 years. Its historical range covered the Indus River valley until the early 19th century, almost all of India, western Pakistan, southern Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and southwestern China. Today, it inhabits India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and southwestern China. It is threatened by poaching, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation.
Species reintroduction is the deliberate release of a species into the wild, from captivity or other areas where the organism is capable of survival. The goal of species reintroduction is to establish a healthy, genetically diverse, self-sustaining population to an area where it has been extirpated, or to augment an existing population. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are typically threatened or endangered in the wild. However, reintroduction of a species can also be for pest control; for example, wolves being reintroduced to a wild area to curb an overpopulation of deer. Because reintroduction may involve returning native species to localities where they had been extirpated, some prefer the term "reestablishment".
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 Endangered on the China's Red List of Vertebrates and is possibly extinct in the wild since no wild individual has been recorded since the late 1980s. In the late 1990s, continued survival was considered unlikely because of low prey density, widespread habitat degradation and fragmentation, and other environmental issues in China. In the fur trade, it used to be called Amoy tiger.
Sariska Tiger Reserve is a tiger reserve in Alwar district, Rajasthan, India. It stretches over an area of 881 km2 (340 sq mi) comprising scrub-thorn arid forests, dry deciduous forests, grasslands, and rocky hills. This area was preserved for hunting, for the Alwar state and was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1958. It was given the status of a tiger reserve making it a part of India's Project Tiger in 1978. The wildlife sanctuary was declared a national park in 1982, with a total area of about 273.8 km2 (105.7 sq mi). It is the first reserve in the world with successfully relocated tigers. It is an important biodiversity area in the Northern Aravalli leopard and wildlife corridor.
Panna National Park is an Indian national park in Panna and Chhatarpur Districts of Madhya Pradesh with an area of 542.67 km2 (209.53 sq mi). It was declared in 1994 as the twenty second Tiger reserve of India and the fifth in Madhya Pradesh. Panna National Park was given the Award of Excellence in 2007 as the best maintained national park of India by the Ministry of Tourism of India. Although the reserve went through an ordeal losing almost all of its tigers in 2009 to poaching, a subsequent recovery program touted as one of the most successful big cat population restorations, has resulted in a growth of up to 80 tigers within the park.
Sanjay National Park is a national park in Singrauli and Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh, India. It covers an area of 1,674.55 km2 (646.55 sq mi) and is a part of the Sanjay-Dubri Tiger Reserve.
John Varty is a South African wildlife filmmaker who has made more than 30 documentaries and one feature film. Varty is also leading a controversial project which aims to create a free-ranging, self-sustaining tiger population outside of Asia.
The Aspinall Foundation is a British charity that promotes wildlife conservation. It was set up by casino owner John Aspinall in 1984 and runs the two zoos he established, Port Lympne Wild Animal Park and Howletts Wild Animal Park in Kent, England. It also runs conservation projects to protect endangered species and rehome captive animals in the wild. The current chairman is Damian Aspinall, son of the founder, and is likely to be succeeded by his daughter, Freya Aspinall, an Internet celebrity who uses social media to increase exposure for the charity and runs the charity's U.S. based affiliate.
Pleistocene rewilding is the advocacy of the reintroduction of extant Pleistocene megafauna, or the close ecological equivalents of extinct megafauna. It is an extension of the conservation practice of rewilding, which aims to restore functioning, self-sustaining ecosystems through practices that may include species reintroductions.
Tiger conservation attempts to prevent tigers from becoming extinct and preserving its natural habitat. This is one of the main objectives of the international animal conservation community. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has played a crucial role in improving international efforts for tiger conservation.
Pench Tiger Reserve or Pench National Park is a tiger reserve in India straddling across Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. On the Madhya Pradesh side, the Pench Tiger Reserve encompasses a core area of 411.33 km2 (158.82 sq mi), with a buffer of 768.3 km2 (296.6 sq mi), making for a total protected area of 1,179.63 km2 (455.46 sq mi). On the Maharashtra side, the Pench Tiger Reserve has a core habitat area of 257.3 km2 (99.3 sq mi) along with a buffer/peripheral area of 483.96 km2 (186.86 sq mi) making total protected area of 741.2 km2 (286.2 sq mi). Pench Tiger Reserve comprises Pench National Park, Mowgli Pench Sanctuary and a buffer area, which span more than 1,920 km2 (740 sq mi).
Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes. It differs from other forms of ecological restoration in that rewilding aspires to reduce human influence on ecosystems. It is also distinct from other forms of restoration in that, while it places emphasis on recovering geographically specific sets of ecological interactions and functions that would have maintained ecosystems prior to human influence, rewilding is open to novel or emerging ecosystems which encompass new species and new interactions.
Bor Tiger Reserve is a wildlife sanctuary which was declared as a tiger reserve in July 2014. It is located near Hingani in Wardha District in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is a home to a variety of wild animals. The reserve covers an area of 138.12 km2 (53.33 sq mi). which includes the drainage basin of the Bor Dam.
Umred-Pauni-Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary is a nature reserve in the state of Maharashtra in India. It is bounded roughly by the Wainganga river and the Gose Khurd Dam in the Bhandara and Nagpur districts.
The Southeast African cheetah is the nominate cheetah subspecies native to East and Southern Africa. The Southern African cheetah lives mainly in the lowland areas and deserts of the Kalahari, the savannahs of Okavango Delta, and the grasslands of the Transvaal region in South Africa. In Namibia, cheetahs are mostly found in farmlands. In India, four cheetahs of the subspecies are living in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh after having been introduced there.
The Laohu Valley Reserve (LVR) is a nature reserve located near Philippolis in the Free State and near Vanderkloof Dam in the Northern Cape of South Africa. It is a roughly 350-square-kilometre private reserve.
Li Quan is a Beijing-born wildlife conservationist who lives in London.
The Siberian Tiger Introduction Project involves reestablishing populations of the Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, in their former range and also expanding their range by introducing them as replacements of their genetically similar relative, the extinct Caspian tiger, which inhabited Central and Western Asia. Currently, the Siberian tiger inhabits the cold mountains of the Russian Far East and northern China.
Rewilding Europe is a non-profit organization based in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, dedicated to creating rewilded landscapes throughout Europe. The group's efforts have contributed to increasing the stock of previously endangered species such as the European bison and the Iberian lynx.
Reed F. Noss, a conservation biologist since the beginning of the field in the early 1980s, is a writer, photographer, and speaker. He retired in 2017 as Provost's Distinguished Research Professor, Pegasus Professor, and Davis-Shine Professor at the University of Central Florida. He is President and Chief Scientist for the Florida Institute for Conservation Science, Chief Science Advisor for the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative, and Chief Science Advisor for the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance. Noss' published work consists of over 350 published or in press scientific articles, book chapters, and major reports and eight published books, with another book in preparation.
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