The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) is a tiger subspecies that was native to the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi in southern China, and has been classified as critically endangered by IUCN since 1996 as it is possibly extinct in the wild. There is a small chance that some individuals are still extant. But already in the late 1990s, continued survival was considered unlikely due to low prey density, widespread habitat degradation and fragmentation, and other human pressures. No official or biologist has seen a wild South China tiger since the early 1970s, when the last verified record is of an individual brought into captivity.
Since the 1980s, the South China tiger is considered a relict population of the "stem" tiger, living close to the possible area of origin. Morphologically, it is the most distinctive of all tiger subspecies.
The name Amoy tiger was used in the fur trade. It is also known as the South Chinese, the Chinese, and the Xiamen tiger.
Read more about South China Tiger: Characteristics, Distribution, Ecology and Behavior, Conservation, Possible Evidence of Wild South China Tigers Survival
Famous quotes containing the words south, china and/or tiger:
“If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The roof of England fell
Great Paris tolled her bell
And China staunched her milk and wept for bread”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)