Farmers set to make way for tigers
Print Edition
Officials in northeast China are planning a resident resettlement and afforestation project to double the size of a key migration corridor for wild Siberian tigers and Amur leopards that has become overpopulated with the endangered cats.
Chinese and Russian conservationists estimate their protection has taken the number of tigers and leopards in Hunchun, Jilin Province, and a nature park over the border in Russia to 35 and 70 respectively.
The stretch of land used by the animals to move between the zones covers 4,000 square kilometers, and they are in close proximity to Chinese residents and their cattle.
More than 8,000 families will be resettled over the next five years in and around Hunchun to make way for the afforestation, said Lan Hongliang, head of the Jilin forestry department.
The government has earmarked 4 billion yuan (US$608 million) to pay for new homes for farmers and help them find jobs, said Fang Yan, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission.
Ge Jianping, vice president of Beijing Normal University, who has studied wild Siberian tigers and Amur leopards for several decades, said that their numbers around Hunchun have reached three times what the area can support. Overcrowding could cause a population crash because of pressure on resources, undoing conservationists’ good work, he said.
“If we fail to provide enough space for their habitat expansion, China will miss the perfect chance for the two species’ rehabilitation,” Ge said.
The problem of big cats brushing up against dwellings is broader than the obvious threat to their human inhabitants, most of whom are herders. Their cattle threaten wild animals as they consume the same grass, and the decline of ungulates, as prey for carnivores, in turn threatens the survival of tigers and leopards.
“The relocation is aimed at reducing the human impact on the corridor for the tigers and leopards, especially from poaching and grazing, which are the biggest threats for both the endangered species and ungulate animals,” Lan said.
He also called on the government to encourage development of green industries such as bee keeping and ecotourism, to balance environmental and economical concerns.
“The farmers must have jobs after they move,” he said.
There are currently about 500 Siberian tigers living in the wild, mostly in east Russia, northeast China and northern parts of the Korean Peninsula.
Amur leopards are critically endangered. In 2007, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said they were extinct in China and that only 19 to 26 were living in Russia.
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