Obstacles
A large difficulty faced by the project is the limited gene pool for South China Tigers - all of the South China Tigers in Chinese zoos are descended from only 6 individuals caught in the 1950s. Since these tigers in captivity have been reproducing with close relatives, the quality of their genes is deteriorating. The project plans to improve living conditions and breed them scientifically - to this end a breeding centre, the David Tang Tiger Breeding Center, has been constructed at the Laohu Valley Reserve.
Mainstream conservationists are however not impressed. The WWF says that the money is being spent in the wrong place and that the Amur Tiger has a better chance of survival.
The biggest obstacles are from man-made resistance, some organizations in China or from abroad kept raising objections and condemn the strategy used to save the tigers, telling the organization to give up. To SCT, these obstacles make the tiger salvation program even tougher.
Proponents of the Chinese Tiger Project argue that the South China Tiger is not only the most ancient tiger species in the world from which all other tiger subspecies are derived, it has been a cultural symbol of China for eight thousand years, so that it from the brink of extinction would have a great cultural impact.
Read more about this topic: Save China's Tigers
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