Save China's Tigers to Fund Wild Cat Conservation Worldwide

Save China's Tigers, a charitable foundation funding pioneering work with the South China Tiger, has broadened its scope of conservation goals from tigers to include all wild cats around the world. Today it launched the "Wildcat Fund” to encourage and support wild cat research, conservation, as well as reintroduction efforts for highly endangered and vulnerable wild cats.

There are currently thirty-seven species of wild cats, with many facing uncertain futures. The best known are the big cats including tigers, lions, and jaguars. Of these, the South China Tiger is the most endangered and is on the verge of extinction. However, three-quarters of the world's wild cats are smaller species and many of these are also highly endangered such as the Iriomote Cat, the Andean Mountain cat, Borneo Bay cat, and the Flat-headed cat.

Historically, funding in wild cat conservation has favoured the large, charismatic species such as lions, cheetahs and tigers. While giving priorities to cat species having the IUCN “Endangered” status or above, Save China’s Tigers’ “Wildcat Fund” also encourages projects conducting pioneering biological and ecological research of little known cat species in an effort to increase understanding of these species and help design improved conservation actions.

Ms. Li Quan, Founding Director of Save China's Tigers said: "My passion has always been for all cats of the world. I am very pleased to be able to contribute to the conservation of all of them through Save China's Tigers’ Wildcat Fund. Over the years, we have realized that for some endangered species to survive in the wild, a multi-disciplinary approach combining captive breeding, rewilding, habitat protection and restoration, and re-introduction can make a valuable contribution to wildlife conservation and the environment. Save China’s Tigers was the first to experiment with this alternative in big cat conservation and we have made a number of significant breakthroughs in tiger conservation. We would like to apply our expertise and share our experience to help save other endangered cats of the world", says Quan.

Projects applying for funding must be proactive conservation projects led by wild cat biologists and ecologists with proven academic record, but more importantly over eight years of field experience. Proposals should not include office and administrative expenditures. "We would like to focus on field activities to counter the trend in conservation where valuable donor funding pays for office infrastructure and expensive conferences. And, we would like to make the projects we fund accountable for our benefactors", Quan added.

One of the first projects that Save China's Tigers will be funding is Brazilian Jaguar expert Dr. Peter Crawshaw's research vehicle to support his various wild cat conservation projects including jaguars, cougars etc. Another is the rewilding and reintroduction of a female Oncilla (aka "Tiger Cat" and "Leopardus tigrinus") in Brazil to learn if it is feasible to think of reintroducing individuals into the wild from captive conditions, as well as to study the behaviour of wild individuals of this little known cat.

Funding applications can be made at any time by completing an application form which can be downloaded from our website. The grant committee will be chaired by Save China's Tigers founder Li Quan with a panel of experienced cat scientists. Any inquiries must be sent to: info@savechinastigers.org

Save China's Tigers would like to use this opportunity to thank all its supporters for their tremendous contribution to our historic Chinese Tiger conservation effort.

WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF:
Conservation Finance International
FOR MAKING THIS NEW INITIATIVE POSSIBLE
Photo by: Yuan Ye

The Microchipping Drama -Never Underestimate the Power of an Angry Tiger

Amid much progress and excitement with our new initiatives, I arrived back at Laohu Valley last night. Hulooo and brothers greeted me in Tiger's Roar Camp. Hulooo, though still welcoming, seemed not as attached to humans as before, which is a good sign. He is either reaching adolescent rebellious age, just like a human teen, or life in the wild is finally turning him into a real tiger.

They were put into Tigers Roars only last night, so I was surprised to see all three of them with faint blood stains on their ruff, and a bit on their legs. They were still licking them off. A kill or two must have been made overnight! We were able to find out later they made one kill, since 28 blesbok remained out of the 29 we had yesterday , but we will not know who was the hero of the pack although we all speculated that Coco would be the one. Never underestimate the others, I said to myself, as Madonna turned out to be hunting "secretly" while we all marvelled at TigerWoods' remarkable abilities when they were young!

King Henry and Princess were separated from mom this morning and were kept in Riverine Camp, in anticipation of their microchipping this afternoon by the Vet Dr. Joseph Van Heerden. This would be a second attempt as the first attempt to microchip them failed when they were two months old. Madonna and cubs had done remarkly well in the past month and made 10 kills in one month while in Tigers Roars and supported themselves completely on their own. We had to buy new game to replensh the stock last week. At this rate, the young tigers will all become proficient hunters in no time!

Joseph arrived before 2pm and checked on King Henry and Princess to estimate their weight. It is important to have as accurate an estimate as possible to apply the right amount of medicine. Joseph is a very cautious vet, and I wrote before how impressed I was with him as he was very cautious in terms of drugs and dosage. The first one to get the dart was King Henry. He dropped down after 10 minutes but as soon as the Vet poked him with a stick to see if he had fallen asleep, he jumped up and ran off. He struggled to stay up walking away but sleep overcame him again. The Vet decided to give him another dose of sedatives. This time he fell asleep just enough for the vet to microchip him but did not give us enough time to apply antidote before he suddenly woke up and stumbled off again. Joseph eventually managed to catch up with him and apply half a dose of antidote to KH but gave up after a bit of chase and decided to let him wake up on his own, which could take quite a while. Fortunately, KH fell into slumber again later and gave the vet opportunty to apply the leftover antidote.

The Vet then prepared sedatives for Princess who, having seen her brother fall, became totally wild. She ran around the fenceline while the vet was about to shoot the dart. But her next move was beyond anyone's imagination! Just when we were turning the vehicle around, we suddenly saw this flash of orange fur flying through the gate separating Catkins Camp and Princes ran off into the trees on the other side of the fence!! How on earth she did that we did not know. We drove to the gate and saw the wires of the gate were split wide open. Microchipping seemed to be always full of drama. We had JenB climbing up the electric fence during their microchipping last year; not mentioning King Henry and Princess couldn't be caught the first time when we tried microchipping; and now we have Princess going through fence! One can never overestimate the difficulties enough in these kinds of vetinary undertakings!

Having now given up the microchipping of Princess, we moved to Cathay, planning to take up the long-dead radio-collar off her. After all that difficulties with the young cubs, we were very anxiuous. However, Cathay was indeed a worldly tiger, and came to the fence to greet us. The whole darting, de-collaring and antidote applying process went smoothly, much to our relief, to compensate for the troubles we had with King Henry and Princess.

We did not complete our tasks fully today, but we learned a big lesson, that no fence is a guarantee of protection when faced with an angry tiger! We now have to leave Princess's microchipping for some time in the future, once more!

Karma and the NSPCA

Only recently, I wrote a blog titled “What goes around” concerning the scandal of Ruth Padel having to resign from the Chair of Oxford Poetry due to her underhanded tactics against the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, and her defamation of myself in her book Tigers In Red Weather.

Just now, a friend in South Africa sent me an article that appeared in “the Star” on July 11th titled “‘Bullying’ NSPCA chief in dog box”. It started as follows:

“The CHIEF executive officer of the National Society for the Prevention of the Cruelty to Animals is under fire for allegedly mismanaging the organisation, misusing the perennial cash-strapped body’s funds and bullying her staff.. SPCA staff approached the Office of the Public Protector to complain that Alberton-based NSPCA chief executive Marcelle Meredith had received inordinate salary increases, that she would regularly receive “inappropriate” luxury vehicles as company cars and that she would ruthlessly deal with employees who question her.”

And the Public Protector concluded in a report to the then agriculture minister Lulu Xingwana: “Upon careful consideration of the facts before us, the Office of the Public Protector is of the view that there may exist serious organisational and human relationship problems within the NSPCA, and that many appear to have their origin in an unaccountable management style.”

Is this Karma, or what? In the Wikipedia definition, Karma is described as follows:
“Karma” is the concept of "action" or "deed" in Indian religions understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies. In these systems, the effects of all deeds are viewed as actively shaping past, present, and future experiences. The results or 'fruits' of actions are called karma-phala.”
This news story is well in line with the grapevine reputations of Meredith who has reigned at the NSPCA for 17 years. I have never met her, but her reputation is well known to me through many sources. One is through ex-NSPCA staff members. And another is of course through the famous five-year fight that NSPCA launched against us. It started with the NSPCA’s threat of criminal prosecution of my team for providing cockerals for our nearly extinct tigers to learn hunting. When they failed to convince the police to prosecute us on this account and the subsequent “live blesbok” supply to tigers, they embarked on a long civil suit against us which cost us millions of rands in order to defend our project and our staff.
We won the case, and won also the appeal, as well as NSPCA’s appeal to the supreme court and the NSPCA was order to pay our legal costs. Our success in court was widely reported in the South African press which prompted readers writing to us showing support and declaring withdrawal of their support for the NSPCA. However, the NSPCA has continued to pursue, which I have no doubt to be Meredith’s determined personal vengeance against us. I often wondered what good could be achieved if the NSPCA actually went after the real animal cruelty issues such as canned lion hunting operators, instead of wasting money prosecuting legitimate conservation programs like ours? As we said before, we are saddened that NSPCA’s compassion for animals does not extend to those that are critically endangered like the Chinese tiger. However, after all, it is donor money Meredith was using to pay her legal advisors to crucify our project, whose founders (Stuart and myself) are not only not paid for their services to the charity, but contributed their own life savings of millions of dollars to it.
The NSPCA was created back in a 1962 Act that gave it police-state-like powers. Even now the public prosecutor has no jurisdiction and its activities seem unaccountable to anyone, let alone taxpayers. Asked about her salary, Meredith pointed out that the NSPCA does not fall under the Companies Act.
Now reading this expose of Meredith on my computer screen, I must say, this has got to be Karma!