Icy streams and forests | 00:00 | |
MCDONELL: The remote mountain forests of China, Russia and North Korea are home to the Siberian tiger. | 00:10 | |
Tigers in forest | It’s a world of deep snow and bitter cold, with temperatures dropping to minus 30 degrees. | 00:17 |
Timber yard | Despite the isolation the tigers’ natural home is fast disappearing. China’s northern forests are being cut down to feed the country’s enormous hunger for raw materials. | 00:31 |
Liu. SUPER: Liu Dan – Chief Zoologist Heilongjiang Tiger Parks | Liu: The tigers’ natural habitat is already under threat or seriously damaged. To recover it would take half a century, or even several centuries. | 00:42 |
Tigers in forest | Music | 00:56 |
MCDONELL: In the wild each tiger ranges across its own territory – usually more than 50 square kilometres, sometimes double that size. These days, there’s simply not enough forest to sustain many tigers. | 01:08 | |
Tiger park | They are, however, thriving in captivity. | 01:28 |
Chief Zoologist Liu Dan is | 01:35 |
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Liu driving through park | keen to show us around the Tiger Park in the North-Eastern city of Harbin. He’s China’s foremost Siberian Tiger expert. | 01:37 |
Liu: The habitat we can see, strictly speaking, is very different to the wild habitat of tigers. For example, our park is not big enough. There are not enough trees and hills to be same as the natural habitat of tigers. | 01:46 | |
Tigers mating | MCDONELL: Captive breeding has been quite successful. Harbin’s Tiger Park has more than 400 Siberian Tigers – a sister park has more than 300. In all of China there are around 2000 in captivity. | 02:24 |
Cubs | That may seem like a healthy population, but for an endangered species it really is a small gene pool. | 02::41 |
Already the scientists have seen genetic deficiencies being passed on. | 02:52 | |
Cubs in enclosure | MCDONELL: How can you tell which tigers have DNA problems? | 03:00 |
Liu: Individual tigers with genetic problems can be spotted straight away from the appearance. For example look at this group of four-month old tigers, they are quite normal: their fur colours, stripes and body shape. The abnormal ones with genetic problems have physical defects such as blurred stripes, limb deformity, slow growth and IQ defects. | 03:05 | |
Preparing blow dart/ Blow dart into tiger | MCDONELL: In response they’ve decided to set up a Siberian tiger gene bank. This will provide an extensive data base on the DNA of the species. | 03:36 |
It will also allow them to stop inbreeding. | 03:49 | |
Sedated tiger | The process involves drugging every tiger. Two blow darts are used to make absolutely sure that the tiger is knocked out. The drug needs 20 minutes to take effect. | 03:56 |
Staff collect DNA | Once the tiger is sedated, zoo staff collect DNA from hair and blood. The samples are analysed at the local university. | 04:09 |
Yan: If we don’t apply genetic management carefully we will lose the genetic diversity. So what | 04:18 | |
Yan. SUPER: Assoc. Professor Yan Chun Xu Northeast Forestry University | the purpose of this experiment/project is to re-establish the pedigree and then we will make a management plan. | 04:23 |
Tigers in snow | Music | 04:35 |
Scientist looks at vials | MCDONELL: Scientists are using stored DNA to map the park’s entire population. Their findings could mean bad news for tigers found to be less worthy of preservation. | 04:41 |
Yan at desk | Yan: A lot of tigers are not genetically significant for the conservation so, from my point of view, | 04:57 |
Yan | I just want to isolate the tigers. | 05:06 |
Tigers in forest | Music | 05:09 |
MCDONELL: The rejects will not be allowed to mate. Ironically the Park’s success in breeding is also creating new problems. | 05:13 |
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Wang. SUPER: Wang Ligang Gen. Manager, Heilongjiang Tiger Parks | Wang: We do have a big shortage of money. Our country gives some support but we rely mostly on tourism and income from ticket sales. The current income from ticket sales could feed 100 to 200 tigers but to feed 700 tigers, it’s become a more and more serious problem. | 05:22 |
Food preparation for tigers | MCDONELL: By far the biggest cost of keeping 700 Siberian tigers is feeding them. Each animal eats 6 to 8 kilos of beef every day, as well as some chicken. | 05:53 |
Truck distributes food to tigers | When the food truck comes around, the tigers quickly recognise it. | 06:12 |
This seems like good tucker for lazy tigers, but it’s hardly what they would have to catch and eat in the wild. | 06:28 | |
Tourists at tiger park | Music | 06:40 |
MCDONELL: Enter the tourists with their cash to spend. | 06:50 | |
At Harbin’s tiger park, visitors can buy live animals for the tigers. Chickens are the cheapest but you can also buy a sheep or an ox if you have the money. | 06:54 | |
Tourists on bus | Music | 07:04 |
MCDONELL: Clearly, this is done for the tourist’s photographic enjoyment. But there is another way of looking at it. | 07:08 |
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Feeding tigers/Wang | Wang: In artificial breeding we feed the tigers with a fixed diet using artificial or processed food which could lead to them being fussy eaters and eventually to malnutrition. The most important thing for the tourists is, they want to use money from their own wallets to help feed the tigers. | 07:14 |
MCDONELL: Giving the tigers live animals is part of a much more ambitious project. There’s a long-term goal of releasing tigers back into the wild. | 07:56 | |
Changbai mountain | Music | 08:06 |
MCDONELL: At Changbai mountain in neighbouring Jilin province, Liu Dan and his colleagues run a small park with only fifteen specially-selected tigers. The trees are tall, the snow is thick, and the tigers seem to love it. | 08:25 | |
Music | 08:38 | |
Tigers in snow | MCDONELL: They’re still behind a big fence, but life is much closer to that inside a high mountain forest. | 08:46 |
Wang | Wang: To send this group of tigers back to Changbai Mountain is to make them experience the natural environment that was once their homeland. | 08:53 |
Liu | Liu: In order to release any tigers, we have to first give them appropriate wild-habitat training. | 09:08 |
Tigers | Music | 09:20 |
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MCDONELL: The small group of tigers moved to Changbai Mountain eight months ago are slowly adapting. | 09:23 | |
Liu driving | Even so, having spent their whole lives in captivity, they need to be fitter. Otherwise they won’t survive in the wild. | 09:31 |
Tiger on roof of car | Music | 09:39 |
MCDONELL: The staff are also checking how well the tigers mark their territory – scratching trees and spraying their urine. | 09:44 | |
Tigers/Liu | Liu: There are huge differences between individual tigers. Some are superior; some are inferior. Some are strong; some are weak. In a small population of tigers, a hierarchy remains. In the wild, a tiger with high rank has a huge space to move in. A tiger with low rank has a very small space. | 09:51 |
Tiger on car | MCDONELL: The scientists are not really sure how they’ll know when their tigers are ready for release into the wild. | 10:17 |
Wang | Wang: A tiger should first adapt itself to the climate changes of four seasons to survive. This is the first point. Secondly, we need to improve the hunting ability of this group of tigers. | 10:23 |
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Tigers at Mount Changbai | MCDONELL: Living at Mount Changbai the tigers are acclimatising to much harsher weather conditions. If they make it to the wild, they’ll also be assisted by an unlikely diplomatic decision. | 10:42 |
Along remote parts of the Chinese-North Korean border, people may not be able to freely cross the frontier, but tigers can. That’s because the Chinese and North Korean Governments allow an open border for animals inside a reserve that the public can’t enter. In that way, wild tigers don’t have their already shrinking environment even further reduced by national boundaries. | 10:57 | |
Liu | Liu: In the past, the borders were separated by iron and wire mesh fences which blocked the tigers and scattered their small population into island patterns. | 11:23 |
Tigers in snow | The establishment of this natural reserve area is especially significant for the protection of the species in the wild. | 11:33 |
Liu outside fence with tigers | MCDONELL: While Liu Dan is preparing his tigers for the wild, you get the feeling he won’t easily let them go: not if there’s any doubt they’ll survive. | 11:50 |
Tigers pacing/Liu | Liu: As I’ve had more contact with the tigers – and I see them almost every day– my feelings for them have grown. As I know more about them, their sounds, their walking, their daily lives I’ve paid more attention to them. And the feelings are mutual. The tigers and me… me and the tigers… our feelings have grown. | 12:04 |
Mount Changbai | Music | 12:42 |
Tigers at Mount Changbai | MCDONELL: The next stage will be to select an even smaller group of tigers for advanced training. This will need a huge area of tens of square kilometres. | 12:56 |
Then, if they can survive the cold, catch their own food and cope with periods of hunger, they might be well on their way. | 13:09 | |
MCDONELL: Do you think that in your lifetime you’ll to see your tigers released into the wild? | 13:18 | |
Liu: I believe – with our wild training over a period of time – and probably with the efforts of several generations of scientists our tigers will finally go back to nature. | 13:24 | |
Music | 13:36 | |
MCDONELL: These tigers are clearly not ready. They’re still not spending the coldest nights out in the open. And they’d be no match in a territorial dispute with a wild cousin. | 13:41 | |
MCDONELL: But, for a species which only ten years ago was heading for extinction, the future does seem brighter. | 13:54 | |
Music | 14:02 | |
Credits: | Reporter: Stephen McDonell Camera: Robert Hill Editor: Garth Thomas Producer : Jiang Xin | 14:10 |