QUAN Li had it made - growing up in a Beijing middle-class family, attending Peking University, taking high-flying executive positions with Gucci and other luxury brands, earning a platinum MBA and marrying an UK investment banker.

What else could any sensible Chinese woman possibly want? Why would she want to rock the boat, change her life and take on a crazy project like saving the nearly extinct South China tiger? Especially when it means sweating in the South Africa bush to "rewild" the great beasts. Especially when the project, a radical experiment, and she herself have come in for some scathing criticism.

But Quan doesn't take the easy way. She's strong and knows what she must do.

"The reason I am trying to save the tiger is because I really cannot bear the idea of losing such a beautiful creature forever. If there were a discipline on wildlife management while I was studying in university, I would have probably majored in that," Quan said during a recent telephone interview from London with Shanghai Daily.

"The tiger is the most important culture symbol in the 5,000 years of Chinese history. Allowing the tiger to perish without making any effort to save it is unimaginable," said Quan, a Beijing native who was born in the Year of Tiger.

The South China tiger, is virtually extinct (many biologists say it's functionally extinct) mainly because of development resulting in loss of habitat and extermination.

There may be only 10-30 left in the wild. In the north, the Siberian or Amur tiger still roams China and Russia, but it too is gravely endangered.

In 2000 Quan founded the nonprofit foundation Save China's Tigers (SCT), based in the UK, the US and Hong Kong. Her husband Stuart Bray bought 300 square kilometers of abandoned pastures in South Africa and in 2003 Quan started with her first two tiger cubs, born in the Shanghai Zoo. They were joined by three other Chinese zoo-born cats. Quan and her team then undertook training or rewilding them so they can hunt and defend themselves.

The ultimate goal is to introduce cubs born in Africa back into special preserves be created in China where eco-tourism would be introduced, improving locals' livelihood and discouraging them from poaching.

Today there are 10 cats - four imported from China and six cubs born in South Africa's Laohu Valley. The difficulty of rewilding such a large predator is enormous - without retraining they are helpless and easy prey in the wild. Quan hasn't succeeded yet. Plans to introduce African-born cubs to China have been stalled since 2008 and again in 2010, the Year of the Tiger. There isn't yet a place where they would be safe though Quan is actively scouting sites with the support of the China's State Forestry Administration.



Harsh criticism

Quan and her grand scheme, considered radical and futile by some, have come in for a great deal of criticism, some quite scathing. Some say she's not a scientist or environmentalist and doesn't know what she's doing, though she has top wildlife experts on her team. Africa is so different from China that it makes no sense to rewild Chinese cats in Africa and send them back to China, where they can't survive, say some wildlife experts.

Quan has also poured a vast amount of money in the project and some argue it would be better spent in trying to save the wild Siberian tigers in China. The South China tiger is almost extinct and its genetic integrity is questionable.

And then there are those who say she knows nothing about running a charitable foundation, that she's just a dilettante and that she's using tigers to make money.

"I am not afraid of all those different or even offensive voices, although they indeed create obstacles and have a bad influence on my work. I believe that actions speak louder than words," Quan said emphatically in the interview.

On the personal side, some friends and her parents in China offer little support, don't like the uproar over tigers and say Quan should spend more time with her family, not with animals. She has no children and lives in London with her husband. She said they have decided not to bring children into the world because there are already so many people, so much poverty, so many problems. Instead, they want to make a contribution to the environment by trying to save the tiger.

"My individual efforts alone aren't enough to change the situation of the Chinese tiger, a species that is heading to extinction. But we still have hope. Even at the end, if we fail and this beautiful animal disappears from our planet, I will not regret what I have done. Saving the South China tiger is a responsibility of the Chinese people," Quan said.

After Quan decided on taking the tiger by the tail, as it were, in the late 1990s she devoted almost all of her money, time and energy to preserving the big cat.



African inspiration

Quan's Laohu Valley Reserve, 600 kilometers north of Johannesburg, started in 2003; it cost her husband US$6 million and maintenance average around US$500,000 a year. Various other related costs have surpassed US$20 million. Each antelope costs US$200 and adult tigers eat one antelope every four days. Quan spends a lot of time there and doesn't shrink from hands-on work.

She imported five tigers from Chinese zoos. Nine cubs were born, and six have survived.

Rewilding is complicated and involves getting animals to hunt and always be alert to danger. Zoo-born animals never killed game before. It is hoped the first imported cubs will teach their own cubs, that will teach theirs, and so on.

Quan was inspired to start her project in South Africa after visiting wildlife reserves in Africa. She saw many advantages: the land was sparcely populated, it was rich in wildlife, including prey for the tigers, and some of the world's top wildlife management experts work there.

Quan is naturally independent. Her parents had served in the army and often were not home. Her father used to be a weapons engineer and mother a singer in performance troupe.

"My personality defines what I do to a large extent. My parents were seldom home during my childhood. Before I went to kindergarten at the age of three, I had lived with my grandmother and a nanny at different times. So most of the time, I had to take care of myself."

She was always good in school. After graduating from Peking University two decades ago, the Beijing girl moved to Belgium with her first husband. She lived abroad for two decades. She divorced, got an MBA at Wharton Business School in the US, moved from one job to another and one country to another. She finally became head of Gucci's worldwide licensing business and worked in the fashion industry for seven years, also working at Bennetton and Filo.

She quit the fashion world in Italy in 1997 to join her then-boyfriend, now husband Stuart Bray, whom she met at Wharton. He was thinking of early retirement. They traveled to Africa and that's where Quan had her first close encounter with big cats, lions, leopards and cheetahs in a wildlife preserve.

That was a turning point in Quan's life; she wondered if China's wildlife could also be protected in such reserves. She did research, donated to international conservation organizations, sought advice form professional organizations.

When she learned that the South China tiger was almost extinct and that some international organizations had given up hope of saving the cats, Quan was shocked. She decide to do it herself.

"Initially I tried to contact conservationists and experts in hopes of support, but I was rejected most of the time. Some said my focus on the South China tiger was a waste of time and money and I should instead give them money for other projects that had a real chance. But I found out later they didn't use donor's money to save tigers.

"Because of that, I instead established my own charity to save the tigers.

"I am the kind of person with tenacity and determination. Once I made my mind, nobody can change it," Quan said.

Support from the Chinese government is important for Quan. She had seen advanced models of eco-tourism and wildlife management in South Africa, and she hoped to apply them in China. She hopes to establish a pilot Chinese tiger preserve, possibly in Hunan, Hubei or Jiangxi Province.

She hopes that Chinese tiger cubs born in Africa will return to the motherland in a reserve where they and the human inhabitants can thrive through eco-tourism and sustainable development. She reasons that tiger tourism will raise money and improve people's livelihood; thus people would regards the tigers and other wildlife as assets, not liablities or food and will no longer kill tigers.

The grand scheme has come in for criticism. Judy Mills of Conservation International, for instance, has damned the project as "a circus sideshow dressed up as eco-tourism." She and others say it would be far better to invest in saving the endangered Amur or North China tiger that still exists in the wild. They question the genetic integrity of the captive South China cats and their descendants and say they could be hybrids of two or more species.

Quan is determined to continue.

"Despite all the malicious criticism, I am determined to carry on my work," she told Shanghai Daily. "I believe the best response to critics is the survival of the South China tiger through our efforts."

Some tiger experts and conservationists do support her mission, including Dr Gary Koehler, an expert from the University of Washington who surveyed South China tigers. He has said Quan's project is experimental but should not be dismissed out of hand, noting Western biologists don't have all the answers.

A supporter of Quan's rewilding project is internationally renowned tiger specialist David Smith of the University of Minnesota's department of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology. He told National Geographic last November:

"The criticism about rewilding tigers in a foreign country is really not valid. The issue is, can we rewild tigers? And, if we can, is there a place for them to be reintroduced in China?

"From what I saw at Laohu Valley, tigers have been rewilded in the sense that they can hunt wild prey of about the same size as their former natural prey in China ..."

Smith said that, from his observations, the tigers were indeed ready to be returned to China. But it had to be done in steps of perhaps two at a time.

"Quan Li needs to keep producing rewilded tigers in South Africa over the next few years. If we look at the successful reintroduction of many species it has often taken repeated introductions."

Early this year a cub was born in Laohu Valley, and first named Miss X. Then Save China's Tigers launched an online campaign to find the perfect name and increase awareness of the issue in China.

In late May Miss X got her name, Huwaa. Hu means tiger and waa is the goddess Nvwa who created human beings and other animals in Chinese mythology.