There are more than 1,300 captive tigers in Hulin Park, why haven’t they been released into the wild yet?

During the tiger rescue and release work at "Wandashan No. 1", one organization stole the show, and that was the Siberian Tiger Park. What kind of organization is this?

I checked online and found that this is an organization that claims to be rewilding tigers, but why is there not a single successful case in the 30 years since its establishment?

Netizens have shouted: "Wandashan No. 1" would be too lonely to be released by itself, so give it a tigress to keep it company. Can the captive tigers in Hulin Park really be released into the wild?

This article answers these questions.

What kind of organization is the Siberian Tiger Park?

The Siberian Tiger Forest Park was formerly the Hengdaohezi Cat Breeding and Breeding Center, which was established in 1986. At that time, the wild Siberian tigers in China were almost extinct. The establishment of this organization has two major goals: first, to use the bones of tigers that died naturally as medicine; second, to release tigers into the mountains and forests after the environment has been restored.

To put it bluntly, it is actually a "tiger farm" whose main business is raising tigers and selling tiger bones; incidentally, it does some research on tiger rewilding.

The organization promises that all revenue from the tiger bone trade will be used to rewild the Siberian tiger, euphemistically known as "raising tigers with tigers."

This idea sounds really good at first, but there are several fatal problems:

First of all, tigers cannot be raised as domestic animals like pigs, cows, and sheep. As the top predator at the top of the food chain, tigers are very expensive to raise. Some experts estimate that it costs a huge amount of RMB to raise a tiger to adulthood, which is 250 times the cost of poaching.

Tiger lifespan is very long. A normal tiger can live for 15-20 years in a zoo. Until it dies naturally, the feeding and medical costs invested during this period will be astronomical. Even if tiger bones are sold at sky-high prices, it will be difficult to cover the cost.

Secondly, and very importantly, most people who are superstitious about the efficacy of tiger bones believe that wild tiger bones are more effective than captive-bred tiger bones. Therefore, they may not even buy these tiger bones that died of natural causes in the zoo.

On one side are captive tiger bones with high purchase price and low profit, and on the other side are wild poached tiger bones with low purchase price and high profit. If you were a tiger bone dealer, which side would you choose?

Therefore, relying on the captive tiger bone trade to protect wild tigers is a joke, and it will make the situation of wild tigers even worse. After all, with such a so-called formal tiger bone trade channel, even if it is poaching The wild tigers can also be said to be captive tigers that died of natural causes.

Fortunately, domestic academic circles have realized very early on that - "If there is no buying and selling, there will be no killing."

In 1993, at the appeal of a group of conscientious experts and scholars, the State Council issued a ban and all tiger bone trade was banned.

Due to the "Tiger Ban", "Tiger Farm" cannot sell tiger bones and has no source of income. We can only turn to tourism to make money.

In order to maintain operations, in 1996, it was decided to let the tigers go out of the deep mountains and forests of Hengdaohezi and go to the big city of Harbin to "work". This is how today's Siberian Tiger Forest Park was established. This strategy is successful. Ticket revenue not only supports the tigers and employees, but also supports the further development of Hulin Park. There are now more than 1,300 captive tigers in Hulin Park.

But the tiger bone trade is so profitable that they are not willing to give up directly. Instead, the tiger bone trade moved from above ground to underground. In the past few years, the news has repeatedly exposed the illegal sale of tiger bone wine in Hulin Garden. The price is still very expensive, 2,800 yuan per pound.

In any case, Hulin Park has made a lot of money from tigers, so how is the tiger rewilding they keep saying they want to do?

The answer is, none.

What work has Hulin Park done for rewilding?

In fact, in recent years, the Siberian Tiger Park has not done any substantive work in rewilding. None of the tigers in the park have received scientific wild training. On the contrary, under their unscientific management, it is impossible for these captive tigers to be released into the wild again.

The Siberian Tiger Forest Park also pretends to do some tiger rewilding work. For example, it feeds some chickens and calves for the tigers to eat, and takes the tigers to wild enclosures to experience the natural environment. However, the most important thing about rewilding tigers is to eliminate their dependence on humans. However, the Tiger Forest Park has staff and even tourists visiting during the entire process, which does not eliminate the tigers' dependence on humans at all. Instead, in order to make money, they charge tourists to feed the tigers themselves.

This kind of rewilding training is simply a joke, consisting mostly of performance and hype.

These tigers have been in contact with humans since they were young, and their dependence on humans has been deeply ingrained in their minds, and they can no longer survive in the wild. If it is really released into the wild, there is a high probability that it will become a man-eating tiger like the captive tiger "Tara" released in India in the 1970s, which frequently entered villages and killed people. Releasing such tigers would be extremely irresponsible to both humans and tigers.

From the rescue of "Wandashan No. 1" some time ago, we also saw that there were many unprofessional aspects in the rewilding of the Siberian Tiger Forest Park.

The first point is that during the rescue of wild tigers, contact with people should be eliminated, but they allowed the crowd to watch the tiger, causing the tiger to become irritated in the cage.

Second point, wild tigers like "Wandashan No. 1" should be released into the wild as soon as possible if there are no health problems. Instead of creating a ridiculous 45-day quarantine period. Foreign animals entering my country need to be quarantined and are only allowed in zoos. Wild tigers have no national borders. It is normal for them to cross the border between China and Russia. Do they need to be stopped and quarantined first?

Third point, during the isolation period, the tiger was kept in a cage of only 20 square meters, and no live prey was provided. Let's compare it to the wild reintroduction in Russia. They all circle a piece of land in the virgin forest for rehabilitation training and provide live natural prey. This reflects that Hulin Park lacks the necessary hardware construction and experience in wild reintroduction.

After this series of embarrassing operations in Hulin Park, if "Wandashan No. 1" is released into the wild, will its understanding of human beings change, and will its strangeness and attack on humans disappear? Whether sex will be enhanced or not is unknown.

Therefore, if the Hulin Park does not sell tiger bone wine, it is fine as an ordinary zoo that raises tigers; but it is not worthy of being a research institution for the rewilding of tigers.

The rewilding of captive tigers is a false proposition

Of course, we must also see that the lack of progress in the rewilding of Siberian tigers in my country is not all due to the inaction of Hulin Park. The fundamental reason is that there is currently no place suitable for releasing tigers in the wild in our country. Restoring the ecological environment and food chain is a huge task that cannot be completed by a company like Hulinyuan.

In some of the historical distribution areas of the Siberian tiger, such as the Wanda Mountains, the Lesser Khingan Mountains and the Greater Khingan Mountains, the tiger’s prey, red deer, roe deer, and wild boar, are now very rare in number. If tigers are released into the wild in these areas, there are only three possible outcomes. One is that the tigers starve to death, the other is that the tigers enter the villages and eat livestock and hurt people, and the third is that the tigers immigrate to become Russian tigers.

In fact, if the ecology of these places is restored and we don’t need to release captive tigers into the wild, the purebred wild Siberian tigers from Russia will come here on their own, because now the Northeastern tigers in some protected areas in Russia The tigers are already full, and they are eager to have a new mountain to occupy.

In fact, the only breedable Siberian tiger population in my country, the Siberian Tiger and Leopard National Park population in Changbai Mountain, naturally spread from the Leopard Land National Park in Russia.

"Wandashan No. 1" and some stray male tigers that appeared in the Wandashan area in the past few years are also from the Sikhote Alin large population of Siberian tigers in Russia. Some male tigers in the Taipinggou Nature Reserve in the Xiaoxing'an Mountains also wandered over from Russia's "wild release population" on the north bank of Heilongjiang.

In short, if the environment is not good, there is no way to release tigers into the wild; once the environment is good, as long as the ecological corridor is opened, the wild tigers will come on their own, and there is no need to rely on releasing them into the wild. Expand wild tiger populations.

Schematic diagram of the spread of Russia's three major tiger populations to China. Among them, female tigers have settled in the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, becoming a truly settled tiger population

Therefore, reintroduction is important for tiger protection. It is a meaningless false proposition.

It only applies to rare cases such as wild orphan tiger cubs, but it is now being hyped by some as a panacea for tiger protection. The rewilding of South China tigers in South Africa, the Tiger Valley in Watti, and the Siberian Tiger Forest Park are all rewilding efforts that do not care about the tiger but the RMB and the U.S. dollar.

So, Chinese and foreign experts have called for: instead of letting the tiger return to the mountains, it is better to protect the tiger's habitat! Tigers in the wild

The "Wanda Mountain No. 1" wild release site - Muling Dongxing Forest Farm, although there are no tigresses, there are many tigresses in the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park not far to the south. , so there is no need to release a captive tigress to keep it company. Moreover, the captive tigers in the Siberian Tiger Forest Park cannot be released into the wild at all. Once released, they may become man-eating tigers.

So, the majority of netizens should stop saying that "Wandashan No. 1" is given a tigress as a companion. This is not a joke. You can't make random jokes. Good intentions may lead to bad things.