"Oh my god, a South China tiger actually appeared on the mountain!" On March 20, the quiet old district of Pingjiang suddenly became excited. Someone discovered a tiger in Shiniuzhai, a natural scenic spot in the county, and took a video of more than 20 seconds.

As soon as the news came out, it not only attracted the attention of relevant local departments, but also attracted the interest of experts and media from all sides.

There is a suspected South China tiger in the video. It is said that the "tiger" was discovered by Wu Hua, a reporter from Pingjiang TV Station.

According to Mr. Zeng, a person in charge of the TV station, at that time, the TV station was recording a program, and Wu Hua randomly went to Shiniuzhai, a natural scenic spot in the county, to collect news.

When he first saw the animal, he didn't dare to conclude that it was a tiger.

But relying on professional instinct, he used the camera in his hand to capture the scene in front of him.

Mr. Zeng, who had seen the video material taken by Wu Hua, recalled that the video was 20 seconds long, and the animal in the picture had obvious stripes on its body, much like the South China tiger in the New Year paintings, but they did not use this video material.

When it was broadcast on the TV station, no one dared to conclude that this was the South China tiger because it had not been verified by experts.

As of press time, Wu Hua, who has front-line information, has not shown up yet, and his mobile phone has been turned off.

After the news came out that a suspected South China tiger was found in the 20-second video of the forestry department's emergency mountain search, at about 2 o'clock this afternoon, Mei Can, deputy director of the Wilderness Station of the Pingjiang County Forestry Bureau, led comrades from the Provincial Forestry Department and the County Forestry Bureau

A group of seven people set off from the county seat and arrived at Shiniuzhai at about 4 p.m.

However, the rain kept falling and the road became very slippery. The group's search for tigers in the mountain did not go smoothly. They were forced to withdraw before they could enter the depths of the mountain.

At the same time, news media from all over the country rushed to the scene as soon as possible. It was already dark at that time, but no footage was taken.

By 9 p.m., Mei Can and his party had just returned to Pingjiang County from Shiniuzhai. Mei Can said that no conclusion could be drawn yet, and the authenticity of this incident has yet to be further confirmed by experts.

Tigers were discovered in Pingjiang On October 30, 2006, tiger traces were discovered in the amphibole rock of Qixingyan Hydropower Station in Dongkou Village, Hongqiao Town, Pingjiang County.

According to witness Wei Qianggen, the animal was about 1.3 meters long, covered in stripes, and left footprints on the ground more than 10 centimeters wide.

Local resident Zhu Zhaoxuan also said that he had seen South China tigers in Pingjiang.

It was the spring of 1952. Zhu Zhaoxuan was a high school student at Tianhua Temple in Xijiang Township, Pingjiang. One afternoon after school, the teacher took them to see a big tiger that had been killed by a local hunter.

When I walked to a place called Gantangpu, I saw a big tiger tied up on a single vertical staircase in the distance. Its eyes were closed, but it was still very powerful.

Zhu Zhaoxuan counted and found that the tiger was nine steps long.

At that time, someone explained to them that ten local people fought for two days before finally killing it with rifles. They also told them that this kind of dark yellow with black stripes is called a tiger.

Most recently, last winter, there were frequent reports in Pingjiang that someone had discovered three animals that looked like cats but not cats, and looked like leopards but not leopards, and one of them was captured.

Later, it was rumored that the animal was a national first-level protected animal - clouded leopard. Mei Can, deputy director of the County Forestry Bureau Wildlife Conservation Station, believed that there are still 5 populations of about 10-18 clouded leopards active in the vast Mufu Mountains.

, the mountain people saw traces of clouded leopards in Pingjiang, which once caused a sensation in Pingjiang.

What is the significance of discovering wild South China tigers? Some foreign experts believe that China's wild South China tigers are on the verge of extinction and have reached a point where it is difficult to recover from the situation.

"In their view, even if there are South China tigers in the wild now, the wild population is too small to maintain, and extinction will happen sooner or later." According to another report, the existence of tigers in the wild shows that the ecosystem in which they live is healthy.

The South China tiger captive population has been degraded due to inbreeding, and the number has been only sixty or seventy for decades.

If South China tigers are found in the wild, especially male and adult tigers, fresh genes can be added to the captive population, which will expand the number of the captive population.

There may be only 3 wild South China tigers left in Hunan. There were tigers in Hunan more than 10,000 years ago. According to paleontological excavation data, tiger fossils were discovered in Bei Karst Cave in Youxian County, Nitong Cave in Bijiashan, Cili, and Yongding District of Zhangjiajie (more than 10,000 years ago).

years ago).

This is the earliest record in Hunan's "Tiger History".

The South China tiger is a tiger subspecies only found in my country, also known as the Chinese tiger. It was once widely distributed in East China, Central China, South China, Southwest and other vast areas of my country. The number once reached more than 4,000. Hunan Province is the distribution area of ??the South China tiger. center.

There are many historical records in this regard, from the "Book of the Later Han Dynasty" recording that "there were many tigers in Changsha at first, and the people suffered from them, so they all moved to other counties" to the Ming Dynasty "in the fourteenth year of Hongzhi (1501), tigers entered the city" (Jiajing's "Changde"

"Fu Zhi Xiang Yi"); from "Tiger entered Yueyang Fucheng, Yuanjiang tiger entered the city" (Guangxu "Hunan Tong Zhi·Xiang Yi") to "Tiger entered Chenzhou City on the eleventh day of winter" in the seventh year of Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1742),

"There were many tigers in Anxiang in the 21st year of Jiajing (1542)" (Daoguang's "Lizhou Chronicles of Zhili"). You can see the vigorous figures of South China tigers that once roamed freely in Hunan.

The most recent record of a tiger entering a city in Hunan was in 1952, when a tiger sneaked into Dayong County (now Zhangjiajie City) in northwestern Hunan.

In 1955, a South China tiger was killed in Yuelu Mountain, Changsha City. This was also the last tiger to appear in Yuelu Mountain so far. Its specimen is now lying in the laboratory of Hunan Normal University.