Two South China tiger cubs born at the Shanghai Zoo earlier this year are headed to South Africa on Friday to learn how to live in the wild.

This is the second pair of cubs from the Shanghai zoo to be sent for tiger training in South Africa. In September 2003, another male and female made the journey.

The two new cubs, also a male and a female, are named Tiger Woods and Madonna.

More cubs are scheduled to join them in the coming years, so that by 2008 about seven will have been trained in South Africa, according to Lu Jun, of the State Forestry Administration's Wildlife Research and Development Center.

"The two cubs sent to South Africa last year are in good condition. They have adapted to the surroundings," he said.

There are fewer than 30 South China tigers living in the wild, placing the species at even greater risk of extinction than the giant panda. Both the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora consider them critically endangered.

Approximately 60 of the animals are maintained at zoos nationwide.

Some experts have warned that the species -- believed to be the evolutionary predecessor of all tigers -- will die out by 2010 if no action is taken.

The Going Wild training program was launched in 2002 as part of the effort to save them, said Quan Li, the founder of the Save China Tigers Foundation. The program is Quan's brainchild, and the foundation provides financial support for tiger training.

Quan said that the two cubs sent last year are now living in a 76-hectare area. In July they successfully brought down a bushbuck, the first time in their lives they had hunted and killed their own food.

During their early days in South Africa, the two refused to eat anything other than beef, she said.

"Bigger animals will be gradually put into the area for them to hunt," she said. Their compound will eventually be expanded to 6,000 hectares.

Lu Jun said both tigers are now bigger than their siblings in the Shanghai Zoo, and the female has shown signs of coming into estrus earlier than her captive counterparts.

"We believe that the tigers can reproduce by themselves in South Africa," Lu said.

Lu and other experts have been looking for places for the tigers to live after they come back to China. The first pair may return in 2008.

Zixi, in east China's Jiangxi Province, and Liuyang, in central Hunan Province, have been recommended to the State Forestry Administration, Lu said.

The ecosystems in those regions will be improved and the variety and numbers of wild animals will be increased in three or four years.

Quan Li stated that ecological tourism would be developed in the regions to help sustain protection of the tigers over the long term. Similar practices have been employed in South Africa, she added.

(China Daily October 29, 2004)