IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Muntifering, J.R.; Nyhus, P.J.; Tilson, R.; Soule, M.E. | |
| Tiger restoration and biodiversity refugia in Asia: 'picking up' the pieces | |
| 2010 Book Chapter | |
The first 'picture' I (J.M.) had of the landscape in China was from a satellite image. Previously I had worked in 10 million acres of intact wilderness full of wolves in northern British Columbia, Canada. My Western conservation lens, tinted by readings of Dave Foreman and Michael Soul‚, transformed the speckled green on the satellite image onto a sprawling landscape of jagged mountains, remote valleys, and rivers. Little did I expect the stark differences in the conservation challenges and realities that southern China would present relative to my prior exposure and notion of what wilderness and landscape-scale conservation was all about. We were preparing for a trip to China to find the last wild South China tigers (_Panthera tigris amoyensis_). The task ahead seemed so simple: find the tigers and develop a network of large connected core areas to protect them. Following introductory survey training workshops with our Chinese counterparts, our team went to the Tiger Nature Reserve in Yihuang County, Jiangxi Province. We were assured by our State Forestry Administration (SFA) colleagues that this was the best place to find the last tigers. I brought Ron Tilson's words of wisdom: 'You have to have patience and persistence. Prepare to walk at least 10 km into the reserve before you find tiger signs. They will be hiding there, in the wildest places.' After a frustrating month convincing my colleagues we needed a field camp in the core of the reserve, I stood 5 km from the nearest village on the top of Yihuang Mountain, a long ridge extending through the middle of the reserve. It was here I realized that any preconceived ideas and visions of how to do tiger conservation in southern China from a North American perspective needed a complete rethink. The lifting mist did not unveil remote canyons and rivers, just valleys peppered with little family garden plots, abandoned rice patty fields, and patches of commercial tree farms. There were no tigers, just farmers and cows. If I had heeded the advice to walk 10 km, I would have walked straight through the reserve and out again into the next village. Over the next 10 months this vision became a recurring experience everywhere we went: this was the reality of tiger wilderness in China, circa 2001. |
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