Far from home, hope for tigers

He is a magnificent animal, his coat a glossy amber, his fangs long and sharp. He paces restlessly up and down the cage. But this tiger, known only as 327, is on the outside and longs to get in.

He is one of the last surviving South China tigers, born in a Chinese zoo and sent to South Africa last year as part of a last-ditch effort to save a creature that most of the conservation world considers a lost cause.

In this reserve called Laohu Valley, 327 could have the freedom of a 100-acre bush enclosure and learn to hunt, but he can't shake a lifetime of padding up and down in a concrete cage. The 5-year-old is being weaned from the breeding centre, the reserve's only cage, where he feels safest.

Some people would see 327 as proof that trying to save the world's most endangered tiger and re-establishing wild hunting populations is a hopeless cause.

But not Li Quan, a Beijing-born former fashion executive with a dream so large that many tiger conservationists ridicule her. She and her husband, American investment banker Stuart Bray, are trying to drag the species, almost wiped out in a “pest eradication'' campaign by the government of Mao Zedong, back from the brink of extinction.

Li's so-called “rewilding'' plan goes like this: China lacks conservation expertise and habitat with adequate prey, so five of the remaining 60 to 70 Chinese zoo tigers have been brought to South Africa, which has both, to breed and to learn to hunt in bush enclosures.

Conservation groups such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature deride the project, saying it is a waste of money.

Scathing dismissal

The most stinging attack came in 2003 from Judy Mills, a tiger conservationist and then an official of Conservation International. She called the project “a circus sideshow dressed up as eco-tourism''.

Li, who initially hoped her plan would win approval in the conservation world, was disheartened and hurt by the attacks. “But then it turned to energy,'' she says. “I thought, ‘I'm going to stake everything I have to prove you wrong'.''
The five zoo tigers brought to Laohu Valley included four cubs — Cathay, Hope, TigerWoods and Madonna — who arrived from 2003 to 2007.

All learned to hunt wild game in the 100-acre enclosure but two years after arriving in 2003, Hope died of heart failure and pneumonia. And 327, who arrived in September mainly for breeding, so far hasn't mated successfully.

The other tigers adapted to their new surroundings. They all have their favourite trees and shady places. TigerWoods has a sleeping spot by the river.

In November, a male cub was born at Laohu Valley, the first birth outside China.

Li, 45, never planned to run the project. But with the tiger conservation world mostly opposed, she has battled to raise funds and find specialists willing to help.

Now she divides her time among her home in London, South Africa and China. Her team consists of Peter Openshaw, 45, a South African game ranger; Tigris Zhang, 25, a Chinese tiger enthusiast and graduate in urban conservation; and Zhang's wife, Jane Shen, 27, a linguist studying tourism.

So far, Li and Bray have spent $12 million of their own money, including buying 81,000 acres of South African farmland in 2002 for the project, and have raised nearly $360,000 in donations.

“I don't cry very easily,'' Li says. “I cried when Hope died. Emotionally, I was devastated. And I cried when the cub was born, out of happiness.''

Many people doubted the tigers would learn the art of hunting. At first, the young tigers would charge across the open ground, allowing their prey to escape easily. But they quickly learned to stalk and ambush blesboks.

Hope in the radical

Gary Koehler, wildlife research scientist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, believes the reason conservationists have been so hostile to the South African experiment is because of a reluctance to embrace new and radical ideas.

Li sees Hope, who was the weakest of the reserve's tigers before he died, as a symbol of the South China tiger's crisis: “He was weak. He was sickened. At the end of Hope's life, he could not even climb over a tree that he always crossed.

“The South China tiger has to jump over a big barrier to be saved. They might not jump, but we must try to help them.''

Li Quan's road to conservation

Behind the wheel of a hefty SUV, Li Quan touches the accelerator with her delicate lilac loafer. She is wearing shorts and a sequined cardigan with a kitten design and has features as fine as bone porcelain — a girlish demeanour that leads some to underestimate her, overlooking her steely core.

She edges the vehicle over the bank of a river on to a rocky ledge, looking for Cathay and her mate, TigerWoods, parents of the cub. They killed an antelope the night before and Cathay is finishing off the carcass.

“You can see their confidence. Once they have learned to hunt, they can hunt anywhere,'' Li says.

Li was born in 1962 in the wake of a three-year famine in China. She grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when the country was poor and intellectuals were humiliated and sent to labour camps for “re-education''. After graduating from Beijing University in 1984, she was assigned a job as an anchor for CCTV but rejected it, knowing she was too outspoken to survive at the post.

Eventually, she decided to study in America, graduating in business studies at Wharton. She became Gucci's licensing manager in Milan, Italy, before marrying Stuart Bray and giving up her career. She says she always had two passions in her life, tigers and anthropology.

She launched her foundation, Save China's Tigers, after a dinner-party conversation, when a friend complained she was wasting her talent.