The return of the king, what happened to the research and protection of wild tigers in China
——Interview with Feng Limin, associate professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University
[Those wild animals that were once endangered]
Northeast China is the main habitat for Amur tigers.
In the winter here, the mountains are covered with snow, and the food in the mountains is relatively scarce, which gives the locals the opportunity to see the true face of the "king of the forest" who goes out for food.
In the opinion of research experts, even if people have the opportunity to meet tigers in the wild, it does not mean that they are out of the endangered state of existence.
In fact, it has only been nearly 50 years that people have truly understood the living habits and behaviors of tigers in the wild.
So, what kind of ups and downs has China's wild tigers experienced?
What is the current population distribution?
Why do scientists turn their attention to the research and protection of the Siberian tiger?
It is the Year of the Tiger in Renyin. This edition invites Feng Limin, an associate professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Life Sciences of Beijing Normal University, the scholar who has carried out wild tiger research for the longest time in China, known as the "Savage Professor", to tell you about the past of wild tigers in China. , present and future.
The Ups and Downs of Destiny Trilogy
Reporter: What is the fate of wild tigers in history?
Feng Limin: The fate of wild tigers is closely related to the trajectory of human development.
The time can be traced back to the agricultural society and thousands of years before, when the vegetation on the earth was not strongly affected by human activities, and wherever there was a forest, there were tigers. At that time, the distribution of tigers on the earth was the heyday.
The decline of the "King of the Forest" population has been within the last century or two.
With the development of human society into the industrial society, the ability to transform and conquer the natural world has been greatly improved, and the ecosystems on which humans and animals and plants depend for their survival have undergone earth-shaking changes. The power of modern civilization can push the entire forest to light on a large scale. Step flat.
"Without the skin, what will the hair be attached to?" Without the forest home on which they depended, wild tigers naturally disappeared.
In addition to being affected by human development activities, the wanton killing of tigers and their prey has also accelerated the disappearance of wild tigers.
Due to the huge value of tigers in illegal trade, it is still difficult to ban tiger poaching in the world today, and customs in many countries and regions can often seize smuggled tiger products.
Due to the above reasons, in the past 100 years, the population and habitat of wild tigers in the world have decreased by more than 90%, from about 100,000 in the heyday to about 3,000 to 5,000 now.
The high fragmentation of habitats and populations has put the "king of the forest" on the brink of extinction.
Reporter: What changes have occurred in the number and distribution of wild tigers in China?
Feng Limin: Historically, there were 5 out of 9 modern tiger subspecies in China.
Among them, the Xinjiang tiger (Caspian tiger) has disappeared for many years; a very few wandering individuals of the Bengal tiger occasionally appear around the Yarlung Zangbo River valley; after the first photo of the Indochinese tiger was taken in Xishuangbanna in 2007, it has never been observed in the wild again. There is solid evidence of its existence in the territory; and the South China tiger, which everyone is most concerned about, has not had any evidence or traces of its survival in the wild for decades.
At present, in China, the only place where wild tiger populations are distributed is only in the Sino-Russian cross-border area, that is, the area where the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park is now located.
The fate of wild tigers in modern China has mainly gone through three stages of ups and downs: the first stage is from more than a hundred years ago to the end of the last century, which is a process of rapid decline in the number of tiger populations, from prosperity to decline; the second stage is From the beginning of this century to 2016, in order to save the "king of the forest", which is on the verge of disappearing, Chinese wildlife researchers and protectors have made unremitting efforts to explore the process; the third stage is a new era of comprehensive construction of ecological civilization. The park-based natural reserve system restores wild tiger populations and habitats from the ecosystem level, uses modern technology and scientific methods to protect tigers, and brings back the "king of the king".
Chinese tigers face crisis in the wild
Reporter: How did the researchers notice the disappearance of tigers in most parts of China?
Feng Limin: In my country, it took only a hundred years for the wild tiger population to rise and fall.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were tiger activities in Hong Kong. In 1915, a newspaper recorded the process of capturing tigers locally. In the 1930s, people also captured tigers in Shanxi. It can be seen that 100 years ago, tigers were very distributed in my country from south to north. widely.
An important period of rapid decline of wild tiger populations in China was the 1950s and 1960s.
At that time, tigers were once considered vermin, and hunting teams were organized in many parts of the country, and tiger hunters were regarded as heroes.
During this period, tiger numbers declined rapidly and quietly disappeared.
The disappearance of tigers in most parts of China did not begin to attract attention until more than a decade later.
In the 1980s, Mr. Tan Bangjie of Beijing Zoo first noticed the rapid disappearance of tigers.
At that time, many animals in the zoo needed to be captured and replenished from the wild, so he often traveled to various provinces to collect them.
In the process, he found that tigers were hard to find in many southern provinces. Not only could they not find live animals, but even the fur companies purchased very little tiger skins.
He is acutely aware of the crisis Chinese tigers face in the wild.
At the same time, Mr. Ma Yiqing of the Heilongjiang Natural Resources Research Institute also noticed that the distribution area of Siberian tigers was significantly reduced when summarizing relevant information.
In the 1990s, the Indochinese tiger began to be noticed by researchers.
Southwest my country is rich in biodiversity, known as the "Kingdom of Animals and Plants", and is the distribution area of Indochinese tigers.
Mr. He Xiaorui from Yunnan University visited the forestry department and estimated that there were nearly 100 Indosinian tigers distributed in Yunnan and Guangxi at that time. Now, this rough estimate may be far from the actual data. The Indosinian tiger may have been critically endangered at that time. situation.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, the Bengal tigers in southern Tibet began to be noticed by researchers.
Limited by investigation techniques and conditions, little information was obtained, and only trace chains and predation of livestock were found in Gedang Township, Medog County, Tibet.
In the winter of 1997-1998, the first real tiger population survey in the wild in Chinese history was carried out in Jilin and eastern Heilongjiang.
Researchers from China, Russia and the United States learned about the distribution and number of Siberian tigers in China through winter transect surveys and snow tracks. Only 5 tracks were found in Hunchun, which is close to the Sino-Russian border. There is no Amur tiger population capable of achieving reproduction and self-sustainment.
2007 was a special year when the Shaanxi "fake tiger" photo incident occurred.
In the same year, we took two significant photos of wild tigers—one was an Indosinian tiger in the jungles of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, and the other was a Siberian tiger in Hunchun, Jilin.
If the "fake tiger" photo incident made the public feel pessimistic about whether there are still wild tigers in China, these two photos give researchers hope.
Amid the hustle and bustle, we silently continued our journey to find China's last wild tiger population.
Tracing the Footsteps of China's Wild Tigers
Reporter: What challenges does the research and protection of wild tigers face?
Feng Limin: Tigers are very interesting animals, both easy to find and not easy to find.
It is a typical territorial animal. If there is a population in a certain area, it means that there are already settled breeding individuals in the area, and the individuals will periodically visit their home area - understanding this behavioral characteristics of tigers can be very helpful. easy to find them.
However, the territory required for tigers to thrive is very large, usually tens, hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers, and their individual whereabouts are secretive and very alert. We have extremely lacked basic ecological research on tigers before.
Worldwide, the true understanding of tiger behavior in the wild stems from long-term follow-up studies in Nepal's Chitwan National Park in the 1970s.
When researchers have no idea about tiger behavior in the wild, entering the jungle is like looking for a needle in a haystack, which is why photos of wild tigers in China were not captured for the first time until the early 2000s.
At the same time, tigers are the easiest and least protected species to protect.
As one of the most evolutionarily successful carnivores, its population grows rapidly as long as there is enough food.
However, tigers are at the top of the ecosystem's food chain and are difficult to protect.
To sustain the long-term survival of wild tiger populations, the habitat must be large enough and the food chain healthy and intact.
On a global scale, the protection of top species such as tigers and leopards is a very challenging cause - protecting them is actually the protection of the entire ecosystem, and it is a country's comprehensive national strength, ecological civilization and all aspects of society. Cognitive test.
Reporter: How do you and your team carry out monitoring and research on wild tigers?
Feng Limin: In 2005, we purchased a batch of trigger infrared cameras from abroad and installed them in the forest.
When the person leaves, the wild animal will pass by the camera undisturbed and leave an image, so that the researchers can obtain accurate information such as the appearance time, location and behavior of the target.
According to literature records, tigers may have settled in the Nangunhe National Nature Reserve in Yunnan.
Our first stop came to the Nangun River.
After a year of investigation, we did not photograph a tiger, but a clouded leopard.
In 2006, I went to Thailand to participate in a tiger survey training course organized by the world's authoritative experts on tiger research. Here I initially learned about the basic living habits of tigers in the wild. Only then did I discover the tiger footprints I accidentally photographed when I surveyed elephants in Xishuangbanna in 2003.
So, I immediately returned to Xishuangbanna. In 2007, I took the first picture of a wild Indochinese tiger in my country, which greatly inspired everyone's confidence in continuing to look for tigers.
In order to understand the recovery potential of the Indochinese tiger population in China, we cooperated with a number of nature reserves in Yunnan to jointly conduct a synchronous survey of the Indochinese tiger and its prey, and obtained information on the distribution of tigers through footprint surveys. Heap counting to understand the prey density of tigers.
In this investigation, we only found footprints of three tigers, one male, two females, and relatively abundant prey groups in Shangyong Reserve, Xishuangbanna.
Due to the rapid expansion of agricultural planting areas, Yunnan's natural forest area was once severely lost, and many protected areas were split into isolated islands. In addition, the long-standing poaching behavior has made large and medium-sized herbivores in most areas scarce, and the potential of the Indochinese tiger Ranges and habitats have shrunk dramatically and become fragmented.
Therefore, we pin our hopes on restoring wild tiger populations to the northeastern region of China.
According to the winter survey from 1997 to 1998, international tiger and leopard experts believe that there are no Siberian tiger populations that can achieve reproduction and self-sustaining in China.
So, are the five traces found in this investigation a sign that the Siberian tiger population is beginning to spread to China?
Since 1998, my country has started to implement natural forest protection projects, and there are still large areas of continuous distribution of forests in Northeast China, which provides a good foundation for future population recovery of tigers.
To this end, Professor Ge Jianping set up a tiger and leopard research team at Beijing Normal University, and walked into this temperate coniferous and broad-leaved mixed forest, and began a journey of chasing tigers on a land of tens of thousands of square kilometers.
For more than ten years after that, as the leader of the field investigation team, I led one group of graduate students in and out of the deep forest.
In the northeast forest area in summer, it is extremely hot and scorching hot, and ticks and mosquitoes catch a lot;
With the assistance of the local forestry department and border defense forces, we carried out the investigation without fear of hardships and with high morale. At the same time, we maintained close contact with Russian experts and carried out monitoring and scientific research at the same time.
As our feet crossed the valleys and valleys of the mountains, we placed more than 3,000 infrared cameras in the habitats and ecological corridors where Amur tigers are distributed or spread, and systematically established the China Tiger and Leopard Observation Network (TLON).
Through scientific investigation, we not only learned about the population and distribution of Siberian tigers, but also obtained the key biological basic information of tiger reproduction and spread in China for the first time, providing detailed scientific support for subsequent protection.
With the extension and improvement of the monitoring network, we harvested the first wild Amur tiger photo in 2007, the first Amur leopard photo in 2010, and the first Amur tiger breeding family in 2012.
From 2012 to 2014, we obtained thousands of tiger and leopard video data, and identified at least 27 Siberian tigers and 42 Siberian leopards in China, which is the first time to confirm that there are breeding populations of Siberian tigers and Siberian leopards in China.
(Reporter Zhang Lei of this newspaper)