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IT'S now official: the Hunan Province South China tiger story has no legs. No stripes or roar either, for that matter.
Hunan authorities said yesterday a reporter's video clip of "a rare South China tiger in the wild" was a hoax cooked up with the aid of a circus owner.
Wu Hua, a journalist with the TV station in Pingjiang County, went along with the scam in a bid for fame, while the circus owner wanted to attract more tourists, according to the Hunan Forestry Bureau.
The incident mirrors a scenario last November when a farmer in Shaanxi Province said he took pictures of a wild South China tiger. The authenticity of those pictures was widely questioned, with some claiming to have seen the tiger image on a poster in 2001. Official investigations into these pictures have not generated conclusive results.
That is hardly the case in Hunan. Sheng Jianhua, the owner of a Shiniuzhai tourism spot and a circus in Pingjiang County, admitted that he took a tiger from the circus to a camp last Tuesday and let Wu film it "in the wild."
Sheng invested more than 12 million yuan (US$1.70 million) in the Shiniuzhai tourism site last year but it attracted few visitors. He then bought a circus in Anhui Province and moved it to Hunan in October.
Wu claimed he had found the wild South China tiger last Thursday in a mountainous region while he was making a documentary. Wu also published pictures from the tiger video on Websites.
The county's forestry bureau assembled a team and searched the mountain with no result. Wu led bureau officials to the area and insisted he found the animal there.
The local government allocated 100,000 yuan to investigate the case and said on Friday the tiger in the video was genuine. How it came to be there was another matter.
Netizens and experts said it was impossible for Wu to have found a tiger in the populated area.
About 806 villagers live on the mountain and there are four homes in the area where Wu claimed to have found the tiger. Many pilgrims climb the mountain every day to reach a temple but none had reported any tiger sightings.
After news broke of the hoax, Wu turned off his mobile phone and declined all interviews after that. He also failed to show up for work.
Xinhua new agency added more fuel to the fire when it reported that comparison of shape, texture and footprints indicated the video was footage of a Siberian tiger and not the rare South China variety.
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