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Shots of tiger in the wild not real
By Ma Lie and Luo Hongyan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-30 07:09 XI'AN: Thirteen government officials have been punished and a man arrested for presenting false evidence to prove the highly endangered South China tiger existed in the wild. The Shaanxi provincial government said Sunday that farmer Zhou Zhenglong had fudged some photographs for the purpose. The government had earlier claimed the photos were real.
The 54-year-old farmer from Zhenping county, who claimed to have photographed the "tiger" with a digital camera on Oct 3 last year, was arrested for alleged fraud on Saturday, said Bai Shaokang, spokesman for the Shaanxi provincial public security bureau. The provincial forestry department has revoked his 20,000-yuan reward ($2,915) too. Experts believe the South China tiger is the progenitor of all the living tiger species. Its number in the wild had fallen between 30 and 80 by 1996, when the World Conservation Union put it on its Red List of threatened species. Now, it is widely believed to have become extinct in the wild. |
