by Scott Leslie
The South China tiger is thought to be the mother of all tigers—known as the stem tiger—from which all other Panthera tigris subspecies have descended. In other words, it appears the world’s biggest cat has been living in this part of China longer than tigers have lived anywhere else on earth. As recently as the 1950s, 4,000 of them roamed the humid, mountainous forests of south-central China, where they hunted anything from mice to wild cattle (and the occasional local farmer, reportedly).
In 1959, as part of China’s Great Leap Forward plan to transform the country from an agrarian society into an industrial state, leader Mao Zedong inexplicably ordered the eradication of all tigers and other big predators. The ensuing slaughter, coupled with habitat loss, shrank the South China tiger population to a few hundred by the 1970s, when it was finally given protection. Although unseen in the wild by biologists since then, it is not yet officially extinct, as occasional unconfirmed sightings by local people and the report of tiger tracks in the early 1990s sustain a flicker of hope that tigers persist in southern China. No hard evidence has been found since, but experts believe there are still a few left, estimating the population in the wild at fewer than 20. As insurance against extinction, there are still several dozen South China tigers in captivity, and the Chinese government intends to reintroduce some of these animals into their former haunts one day. However, nobody knows exactly where the wild tigers currently live, so if they survive at all, there’s little at present that can be done to protect them. Fortunately, things look brighter for the better-studied Amur leopard, another big cat whose range includes China.
AMUR LEOPARD
A few hundred thousand years ago, African leopards reached Asia. They got as far east as the Sea of Japan, to an area where today southeastern Russia, northeastern China, and North Korea meet. As a geographical nexus of three head-strong nations, the area is politically sensitive. What’s more, this place of great biodiversity and beautiful forests is also heavily populated. It’s hard enough for spectacular cats like leopards to survive anywhere; in a place like this it’s almost impossible.
Living farther north than any other member of Panthera pardus, the Amur leopard subspecies has evolved a thick, cream-coloured coat for bitterly cold winters (it turns a more familiar reddish-brown in summer), and longer legs for stalking deer and other prey in deep snow. Distinctive rosette markings and pale blue-green eyes make for a striking creature, even for a leopard.
Only 25 to 40 animals are thought to survive in a slender band of habitat within the Primorye region of Russia near Vladivostok, along with a few across the border in the adjoining forests of China. This handful of leopards shares the forest with about 10 Amur tigers (not to be confused with the South China tiger), the largest cat species on earth. Once as rare as the leopard, the recovery of this tiger subspecies is an example of successful conservation: its population has grown from fewer than 50 animals a few decades ago to about 500 today. It’s lucky for the leopards that so few of the bigger cats live this far south, since they compete with them for prey such as sika and roe deer. What’s worse, tigers have been known to eliminate their competition by eating them. But, so far, there’s little evidence of conflict between the two species here. The leopards have bigger problems.
There’s only so much food to go around any ecosystem, and in the Primorye region the cupboard is getting bare as poachers compete directly with the leopards by overhunting deer to the point of scarcity. This lack of prey is thought to be one of the greatest barriers to the population recovery of the Amur leopard. It’s hard to rear young when you can’t feed them.
It is even more difficult when local villagers set fire to the forest to create better growing conditions for a type of edible fern that is popular in the regional cuisine and sold at market. Leopards and their prey don’t survive well in burned-over forests. Moreover, Primorye is a border region and economic corridor with a large, growing population, and illegal poaching of the cats for their coats is a problem. There is also constant pressure to develop new gas and oil pipelines, and expand road and rail networks, logging, and mining. Despite this, the leopard’s population has remained relatively stable over the past 30 years.
Thankfully, the Amur leopard and its tiger cousin have allies in their struggle to survive. A coalition of a dozen or so conservation groups known as ALTA (Amur Leopard and Tiger Alliance) has the big cats’ best interest in mind. In 2006, ALTA helped stop plans to build an oil pipeline terminal within the range of the leopard. And the recent creation of a tiger-leopard reserve in China that borders other wildlife refuges in Russia is a sign of hope for the species. While ALTA and others educate the public and push for measures to protect habitat, captive breeding programs for the Amur leopard in zoos in Europe and Russia are also ensuring a pool of animals for possible future reintroduction programs. Although the leopard is still perilously rare, recent footage from hidden camera traps in 2011 suggests that there may be a few more animals in the population than originally thought. So it appears this distinctive, great cat still has a fighting chance.
ASIATIC CHEETAH
The antithesis of a forest dweller such as the Amur leopard, the sleek, athletic cheetah—the world’s fastest mammal with a top speed of 110 kilometres per hour—inhabited the open savannahs and grasslands of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Arabia, and Iran until the 1940s.
In the late 16th century, this Asiatic subspecies of the cheetah was so plentiful that the great Mogul emperor Akbar had a stable of at least 1,000 of them that he used for hunting gazelle and deer (the cheetah’s natural prey species). This spectacle was often depicted in Indian and Persian art of the time. Keeping cheetahs as pets or hunting animals wasn’t limited to royalty, however, and their widespread use by the wealthy continued into the 1800s. But the exploitation didn’t end there. The predator became the prey as the relentless killing of cheetahs, coupled with the elimination of the deer they needed to survive, reduced the cats’ numbers drastically by 1910. Add the destruction of native grassland habitat for agriculture, and the Asiatic cheetah was all but history. By the mid-20th century, the species was wiped out in India and southwestern Asia—the last three shot in 1947 by the Maharaja of Surguja, who also slaughtered 1,157 tigers during his life, thus playing an important role in ushering another Asian cat to near non-existence. And, lest you think he was some kind of anomaly, another of his ilk nearly equalled these exploits with 1,000 tiger kills. Still another killed 300. And none other than King George V of England, who, with his princely son in tow, bagged himself no fewer than 39 tigers (plus four bears and 11 rhinos) on a hunt in Nepal in 1911. Such cruelty for “sport” defies the imagination.
Now, all that is left of the once-abundant cheetah in Asia is a relic population of between 70 and 100 widely dispersed animals scratching for existence on the arid central plateau of Iran, a dangerous crossroads of drug smugglers and armed outlaws. Here, on top of the destruction of their habitat by agriculture and development, the desertification of grassland by the overgrazing of cattle, and the decline of their prey species, cheetahs are illegally hunted by poachers coming into the desert on newly created mining roads. However, in a sweetly ironic twist, it appears that illegal hunting might be on the wane, as the poachers are afraid they might be killed by drug-running thugs in the area.
Iran’s cheetah strongholds consist of five widely dispersed protected areas. Although these national parks and wildlife refuges cover millions of hectares, much of the habitat is fragmented into smaller bits by roads and development. Moreover, some cheetahs live in unprotected areas, making them difficult to safeguard and accurately count.
As if all that weren’t enough, the world’s cheetahs have always been cursed with a very limited gene pool stemming from a “genetic bottleneck” they passed through about 12,000 years ago. At that time, some kind of environmental catastrophe such as climate change or overhunting by paleolithic humans left only a handful of cheetah survivors to act as the breeding stock from which all of today
’s cheetahs have descended. With little genetic variability, the species is particularly vulnerable to disease, and its cubs experience high mortality. Findings from a recent DNA study published early in 2011, however, suggest that the various subspecies of cheetahs (which range from Iran to southern Africa) possess more genetic variability than originally thought.
The homegrown Iranian Cheetah Society was established in 2001 to save the subspecies. That same year, the Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah and Its Associated Biota program was begun by the Iranian government in cooperation with the United Nations Development Fund. Several international conservation organizations are also involved, including the Wildlife Conservation Society and the IUCN. Unfortunately, strict Iranian laws barring Western conservation scientists from the country limit access to the wealth of field experience they’ve had in the recovery of other large cat species around the world, making it all the harder to save this remarkable animal.
Despite scant evidence it still exists there, Iran’s neighbour Afghanistan added the Asiatic cheetah to its own endangered species list in 2010, thus outlawing its killing. And India, 60 years without cheetahs, has begun efforts to reintroduce them, although that country will be using an African subspecies as breeding stock.
IRIOMOTE CAT
In contrast to the three cats discussed above, which are regional races of species that range across nearly an entire hemisphere, the diminutive Iriomote cat has lived exclusively in the mist-shrouded, primeval jungle and mangrove swamps of its namesake island in the East China Sea since tectonic forces separated it from mainland Asia 200,000 years ago. What’s more, fossil evidence suggests the Iriomote may have existed as a species even earlier than that, nearly two million years before Iriomote was an island. Some paleontologists see it as a living fossil, possibly one of the original species of cat. But with its population at fewer than 100 and shrinking fast, its long tenure is threatened.
The animal was apparently unknown until 1967, even though Iriomote-jima (nearby is the famous World War II battle island of Iwo Jima) is a relatively compact 280-square-kilometre island that has been occupied by humans for centuries. How the presence of a wildcat—even a small one like the Iriomote—could have gone unnoticed for so long is a testament to its secretive nature. Even today, most of the scientists who study the cat have seen it only through the lenses of the remote cameras they’ve set up throughout the island to monitor the species—rarely are they seen in the flesh. Maybe this feline’s painfully shy, skulking nature or its craggy, wet, vegetation-entangled habitat has something to do with it. Whatever the reason, this ghost cat has been seen by few human eyes, and as its population slides toward zero, it’s likely few ever will.
The Iriomote cat is about the size of a big tabby. Its dark brown fur is adorned with even darker lateral stripes. Short legs, short rounded ears, and a short tail have evolved as an adaptation for hunting in extremely dense vegetation. Its diet includes small mammals, birds, fruit bats, insects, and frogs. Like the closely related fishing cat on the Asian mainland, the Iriomote has partially webbed feet and is unable to fully retract its claws, similarities that suggest it too may obtain some of its prey from the water. Given its preference for the wet lowlands and mangrove forests of the island, fishing or at least hunting for crabs and other such aquatic animals might not be a far-fetched idea.
Because of the limited available habitat on the island, its number was probably never large, likely peaking at several hundred individuals. Despite its success at avoiding contact with humans, it has been completely unsuccessful at avoiding their accelerating impacts on its habitat over the past few decades. Even though the island has a permanent population of just over 2,000 people, it attracts every year some 400,000 visitors, who come to visit its tropical coral reefs and beaches. A few even come for an unlikely glimpse of the Iriomote cat itself. And, although practically never seen in the flesh, its presence looms large on the island, as its stylized cartoon image is splashed on buses, road signs, businesses, and in advertising. There are even sculptures of it. In short, the Iriomote cat is somewhat of a celebrity, if a spectral one. Ironically, the popularity of this mysterious species is in a small way responsible for the rapid expansion of the tourism industry, with its new hotels and resorts and widened roads, all of which have eaten into the island’s natural habitat that is so necessary for the cat’s survival.
Its threats are diverse. Primary among them is habitat destruction on an already small, 289-square-kilometre island whose main highway runs directly through the heart of the cat’s natural home. Add to that the exponential increase in the number of vehicles to serve the tourist trade and you’ve got several cats being road-killed every year. Three or four per annum may not seem like a lot, but consider how small the population is already. And there’s more. Scientists are concerned that a large population of feral house cats could transmit harmful diseases such as feline leukemia to the Iriomote. It is also feared that a fungus now spreading through the world’s frog populations might reach the island and wipe out the native frogs that are one of the cat’s important staple foods.
As rare as the Iriomote cat is, “never say never” must surely be the motto of those who are trying to save it. The island’s Iriomote Wildlife Conservation Center has been working for more than a dozen years to protect the cat. Besides educating islanders and visitors about its plight, it has installed signs along roads warning drivers to be on the watch for them and has built more than 80 underpass crossings for them along the main road. The centre also takes in and rehabilitates injured or sick animals and has taken steps to protect the island’s frogs from the deadly chytrid fungus by laying out antifungal mats at Iriomote-jima’s ports so that it doesn’t enter the island on visitors’ shoes.
It’s easy to be pessimistic about the fate of the feline, but the effort and the faith shown by those trying to save it inspire a glimmer of hope for the Iriomote cat. After all, it has survived without our help on this little island in the Pacific for eons. Can it now survive with it?
EL LOBO (MEXICAN WOLF)
It is ironic that we’ve allowed the Iriomote cat and the little Mexican wolf to be pushed to the brink of extinction. You’d think we’d care a little more than this about such close cousins to our beloved domestic cat and dog companions.
Known as el lobo, the Mexican subspecies of Canis lupus is the rarest wolf in North America. Weighing in at just 23 to 39 kilograms, it is the smallest wolf on the continent. It used to range over vast areas of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico and appears to have lived as far north as Colorado.
El lobo’s troubles began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as ever more people settled the southwest. As populations of wild elk and deer dwindled because of overhunting by the growing hordes of settlers, without an adequate supply of wild food the Mexican wolf had no choice but to turn to livestock to survive. Who could blame it? Apparently, just about everyone. The scorn of the US government and western ranchers soon festered into an all-out, one-sided war. Mexican wolves were poisoned, shot, and trapped, and their dens were even dug up with mom and pups inside—anything to rid the region of “varmints,” as they were called. By the 1950s, el lobo was all but gone from the deserts of the southwest. The last confirmed Mexican wolf in the United States was killed in west Texas in 1970. Only a tiny remnant population survived in the roadless wilds of northern Mexico.
Almost too late, in 1976 the United States listed the Mexican wolf under the Endangered Species Act (a law that didn’t exist before 1973), and collaborated with its neighbour to the south on its recovery. After scouring the Mexican desert during the three years between 1977 and 1980, biologists were able to find only four males and one pregnant female. The entire known population of the Mexican wolf could be counted on one hand.
With so few left, it was as good as a death sentence to just leave them in the wild. Legal protection from hunting would do little to protect the animals against the vicissitudes of the desert: poachers, tr
apping, poison bait, starvation, disease, and so on. So, the five wolves were captured in a last-ditch effort to save them. The goal was to eventually grow this population enough so that el lobo could be reintroduced into the wild with a fighting chance to survive and maybe even thrive someday on its own.
In 1998, after nearly 20 years of captive breeding, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) finally reintroduced a small pack of 11 carefully reared Mexican wolves into the 18,000-square-kilometre Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area of the Gila and Apache National Forests of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona. In the years since, they have begun to readapt to a landscape their ancestors had roamed for millennia. Like wild wolves everywhere, they are forming family packs, hunting deer and elk, and having pups. They should be thriving, but they aren’t.
Although the USFWS program’s target was a population of at least 100 by 2008, by 2011 it stood at half that. The poor result might have something to do with the official designation the wolf was originally given when it was listed under the Endangered Species Act. Rather than declaring it endangered under the law, which would have given it the fullest protection possible, the government listed the Mexican wolf as “an experimental, non-essential population.” That the last few animals of an entire subspecies could be seen as non-essential may seem counterintuitive, but in the face of strong opposition from the anti-wolf lobby, it was apparently the best the little wolf was going to get. As a consequence, any wild Mexican wolf that attacked livestock three times in one year could be legally culled or captured. Ranchers graze livestock on the same public lands in Gila and Apache National Forests where the reintroduced wolves live, and natural prey species such as deer are less common than in the past, so it’s not surprising that a rare encounter between a hungry wolf and livestock might occur. It was only a matter of time before ranchers would be demanding wolves’ heads. And so, history had come full circle: the animals were hunted as vermin once again. According to some wildlife conservationists, such culling is the main reason the population hasn’t reached the targeted 100 animals. In defence of the USFWS, this culling and capture option was used only after 2003, when the federal agency turned over management of el lobo to a committee headed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. The US government has recently taken over the management of the Mexican wolf again and has stated it would no longer exercise the option to kill them.