Resourceful ways help Siberian tigers back to the wild in NE China

A breeding center in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province has been implementing captive breeding and conducting re-wilding training to conserve the endangered Siberian tiger and boost its population.

Established in 1986, the China Hengdaohezi Feline Breeding Center is the world's largest breeding center for Siberian tigers. This year, the center welcomed 63 newborn tiger cubs, with a 86 percent of survival rate.

"We use the milk powder specially formulated for the baby tigers and feed them four to six times a day," said Xu Haitao, a caregiver at the veterinary department of the breeding center.

With the help of big data, the baby tigers are bred in a way to protect their genes so as to avoid inbreeding in the wild and guarantee the herd quality.

The breeding center also boasts a rewilding training area covering an area of 40,000 square meters. The training area simulates primitive forests so that the tigers can be rewilded in a close-to-natural environment.

"In winter we mainly train the tigers to resist the cold, and we don't allow them back indoors. The outside is their perpetual territory, where they will learn to survive on their own and improve the ability to survive in the wild," said Xu.

At present, the population size of the wild Siberian tigers in China is not large enough for their sustainable survival in the wild, and the improvement of the ecological environment is an important factor for their smooth return to the mountains and forests.

In recent years, Heilongjiang has built a number of nature reserves to protect Siberian tigers, Amur leopards and other wild animals, implemented forest protection and wetland restoration projects, and cracked down on various illegal and criminal activities that harm wildlife resources. As a result, the populations of rare and endangered wild animals including Siberian tigers have been effectively restored.

"As a flagship species, the Siberian tiger stands at the top of the food chain, and its existence proves that the food chain is complete," said Xu.

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