About 50 south China, Siberian and Bengali tigers, mostly cubs less than a year old, have reached their new home after traveling for one day and a half, said Zhou Weisen on Friday, a Hong Kong-based businessman and also general manager of the Guilin Mountain Farm for Bears and Tigers where the tigers were raised.
These tigers were put into specially built iron cages on Tuesday and moved by bus from Guilin, one of China's most popular tourist spots, to Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.
Zhou said the migration was necessary because of the rising cost of keeping more than 300 tigers on his farm, considered the world's largest tiger breeding and scientific research base. Tigers are also taught there how to hunt to prepare them for their return to the wild.
He planned to move about another 50 tigers to Nanjing before May 1, he added.
Experts estimate that the number of tigers living in the wild in China is no more than 50, and no more than 3,000 worldwide. Artificial breeding has become the major method of saving tigers from disappearing.
( People's Daily April 19, 2002 )
