Howling tigers in Africa? has also been a hot topic in recent years. Many people on the Internet say that tigers have successfully become wild in South Africa, causing considerable damage to the local ecology and killing many lions. Is this true or false?
What kind of project is African Tiger Roar?
The African Tiger Roar is the Tiger Valley project in South Africa, located in the Free State in central South Africa. This project was originally launched in 2000 by Quan Li, a Chinese woman and founder of the "Save China's Tigers" foundation. It aims to train endangered South China tigers in captivity and release them into the wild in China.
Quan Li’s South China tiger killed a white-faced hartebeest
Quan Li found John Varty, a famous South African wildlife producer, to cooperate. However, the cooperation was terminated in 2002 because Wati misappropriated funds to purchase personal real estate. Quan Li and Wati have respectively established their own Laohu Valley projects. Quan Li's is called Laohu Valley, while Wati's is called Tiger Canyon. One uses the Chinese pinyin of tiger, and the other uses the English word for tiger.
Wati's Tiger Valley is completely different from Quan Li's original idea. He has introduced two pairs of Bengal tigers (some mixed with Siberian tiger blood), claiming to establish a wild tiger population in Africa. The two pairs of tigers are brother and sister Ron and Julie introduced in 2000, and brother and sister Xitao and Phantom introduced in 2006. Vaati paired Sita with Julie and Ron with Phantom, and they have been bred for several generations now.
As a producer, Wati has made two documentaries about his training and breeding of tigers, namely "Walking with Tigers" produced by Discovery Channel in 2003 and "Walking with Tigers" produced by National Geographic in 2011. "Private Lives of Tigers", the story of "The Roaring Tiger in Africa" ??that domestic netizens know mostly comes from these two documentaries.
Services of Laohu Valley
Wati’s Laohu Valley and himself have websites and social accounts. The most popular ones are the tourism, catering and hotel accommodation services in Laohu Valley. Therefore, Laohu Valley is Wati’s personal business project and has strong profit-making attributes.
Has tiger rewilding been successful in South Africa?
Wati named this place where tigers are kept in captivity the Tiger Valley Private Hunting Reserve. He claimed on his website that the tigers here live a free life without anyone disturbing them, and they are all wild tigers. At the end of "Walking with Tigers", Watty and his trainer David claimed to have successfully rewilded two young tigers, Ron and Julie, and reluctantly said goodbye. In fact, there is no need to say goodbye, because they have always seen each other.
The most important thing about tiger rewilding is to get rid of the tiger's dependence on humans and to make the tiger consciously stay away from humans. This is also the biggest failure of the Laohu Valley project.
John Watty (right) and his tiger
It can be clearly seen from "Walking with Tigers" that Watty and others not only made no effort to get the tiger away from them, Instead, it has been intensifying its interference with tigers. Both tigers were accompanied by humans when hunting. After the tigers finally finished hunting, they had to forcefully snatch the prey away in order to maintain "control" over the tigers.
If Wati really wants to release the tigers into the wild to live freely, what is the point of controlling the tigers? In fact, Wati is not trying to release the tiger back into the mountains at all, but to train the tiger, just like training a hound. The difference is that people train hounds for hunting, while Wati trains tigers to make money from filming.
As seen in "The Private Lives of Tigers," Vaati was able to get close to the tigress and her cubs, photograph them at close range, and even pet them, something that would be impossible with a real wild tiger.
The tigers in Laohu Valley lack basic fear of humans. Fortunately, they are surrounded by fences. They live in a closed space. Otherwise, they would have to be killed every minute for threatening humans and animals. . Two female tigers once escaped from the enclosure and were shot dead by locals soon after.
Tiger in Laohu Valley
In addition, it is doubtful whether the closed space of Laohu Valley is considered a wild environment.
The project was originally planned to cover an area of ??370 square kilometers, which, as Watty himself said, is "six times the size of Manhattan Island". However, after Quan Li and Wati separated, it is unknown how much land they each received. Wati said in the film that his rewilding training was completed in a 30,000 square meter fence, and then the tiger lived in a large fence of 600,000 square kilometers.
600,000 square meters is 0.6 square kilometers, which is far from enough to feed tigers. In Chitwan National Park in Nepal, the territory of a wild adult female tiger is 20 square kilometers, while the territory of an adult male tiger is about 150 square kilometers. Chitwan is also an area rich in tiger prey, and tiger territories are generally small. In Russia's Sikhote Alin Reserve, a female Siberian tiger's territory is 500 square kilometers, and a male tiger's territory is even larger.
The territory of a wild tiger is highly exclusive and no other individuals of the same sex are allowed to enter. How many tigers are raised in the Tiger Valley in Wati? At most there were 26.
A 20-month-old tiger cub in Laohu Valley
How does Wati feed so many tigers in such a small place? Moreover, according to the website, there are cheetahs, servals, wild cats, foxes, hyenas, aardvarks, monitor lizards, porcupines, cobras and other animals in the valley, but there is a lack of hoofed animals, which are the staple food of tigers. The answer is also told to you in the film, which is to buy ungulate animals and put them in the Tiger Valley for tigers to prey on. This is the same as feeding live chickens in some domestic wildlife parks.
Wati claims that his valley has the only wild white tiger in the world. It is true that there are no wild white tigers in the world, but the problem is that his tiger is not wild either. Xitao and Julie both carry the white tiger gene, so they have a 25% chance of giving birth to a white tiger. White tigers in zoos have serious health problems due to inbreeding, not to mention the lack of camouflage color, which makes them unsuitable for survival in the wild.
Wati bred white tigers that were not suitable for survival in the wild just to attract attention, which had to make people even more suspicious of his motives.
Vati presents himself as a researcher in the film, but in fact he is not a scholar at all and has never published a paper. His Laohu Valley rewilding project has not been recognized by any academic papers or monographs.
The female white tiger and her two white tiger cubs
To sum up, Laohu Valley is essentially a very large wildlife park, or tiger ranch. The ones in most zoos are stronger, but they are still essentially captive tigers, not as good as real wild tigers.
The truth about tigers killing lions
There is only one instance of a tiger killing a lion in Laohu Valley. The murderer was Sita, a male tiger, and the victim was Savannah, a lioness. Savannah was also born in the zoo and was raised by Sita's wife, Julie. In January 2011, there was a major flood in the area. In order to escape the flood, these tigers and lions crowded together, creating a chaotic scene. Wati and his gang decided to anesthetize the big cats and separate them. Tragedy happened at this time. Before Savannah recovered from the anesthesia, Sitau attacked it and bit its throat. Savannah died due to massive bleeding and ineffective rescue efforts.
The lioness Savannah helps her adoptive mother raise a litter of tiger cubs
Savannah is quite large, reportedly weighing 160 kilograms. When she was normal, Xitao never offended her. A male tiger killed a female lion and still didn't recover after being anesthetized. I really don't know what to brag about. Savannah and her adoptive mother Julie have a deep relationship. They often hunt together and help Julie raise a tiger cub. Not long after Savannah was killed, the helpless Julie was also killed by the Phantom. The old Julie could not defeat the Phantom in his prime.
Some fanatical tiger enthusiasts in China have made up multiple versions. It is not true that Ron killed two stray male lions one against two, or that a tiger beat a group of lions and killed the leader of the lion group. It exists, but no source can be found. The tigers in Laohu Valley have always lived in a fenced area, and there are no wild lions at all.
The tigers fighting among themselves in Laohu Valley are very fierce. According to incomplete statistics, 12 of the 16 adult tigers that died in the valley died at the hands of their own kind, which is almost like a colosseum. Personally, I think this is directly related to the small area of ??Laohu Valley and the high density of tigers. Wati tried to shirk the blame, saying that they were both wild tigers and it was normal for them to fight.
However, Laohu Valley is just a wildlife park, and poor management is the root cause. Since we don’t have such a big place, don’t raise so many tigers.
Two tigers fighting in Laohu Valley
Conflicts between humans and big cats also occur frequently. In 2017, a 3-year-old child of an employee in Laohu Valley was killed by a cheetah. It is rare for a cheetah to injure a human under normal circumstances. This time Wati's response was quite positive. He said that Cheetah would not be punished in any way because Cheetah had no fault and it was all human fault. He was the boss and was fully responsible for this. At the same time, Wati himself was attacked by a tiger and had two ribs bitten off. He also accidentally shot a female tiger with cubs in the foot.
Will tigers really destroy the African ecology?
Writing this, the answer is already clear, of course not, because the tigers here have never been successfully reintroduced into the wild. Some people indeed question that tigers will affect the local ecological balance. The official response of Laohu Valley is:
The Laohu Valley project was built on the land of 17 abandoned sheep pastures. The local ecosystem has been damaged by excessive Destroyed due to grazing, this project has positive significance in restoring local biodiversity. Moreover, Laohu Valley is completely enclosed by fences, so tigers have no access to local wildlife. It seems that Vaati knows very well whether his tiger is a wild tiger.
Cheetahs in Laohu Valley
The roaring tigers in Africa are destroying the ecology, which is mainly a concern of domestic netizens. They have two worries. One is that the tiger runs too fast, and the other is that the tiger eats too much. To be honest, both of these concerns are ridiculous.
The film emphasizes many times that tigers are ambush hunters in the jungle and need cover to get close to their prey. Speed ??has always been a tiger's weakness. Some people are amazed when they see tigers hunting antelopes and ostriches. What a fuss!
The antelopes hunted by tigers in "Walking with Tigers" are mainly white-faced hartebeests. This antelope runs very slowly and cannot be faster than the tiger's natural staple food, the white-spotted deer. In the film, the tiger also killed three springboks. The springboks did run very fast, with a speed of 80-90 kilometers per hour. However, the three springboks were captured in the rugged canyon area, and one of them slipped. In this environment the Springbok's speed advantage cannot be used.
In the Kalahari Desert, where springboks are abundant, springboks account for 13% of the lion’s diet and 65% of the leopard’s diet. Lions and leopards can also hunt gazelles. In the Serengeti savannah, Thomson's gazelles account for 7.5 and 30-70% of the diet of lions and leopards respectively. The habitats in Kalahari and Serengeti are endless, and big cat hunting is more difficult than in Tiger Valley. The hunter does not necessarily have to run faster than the prey. As long as the big cat is prepared to ambush and get closer, taking advantage of its fast acceleration, the big cat can still catch the prey.
Tiger cub chasing springbok
In addition, ostriches are really not that fast. According to actual measurements by scholar Alexander, a 40-kilogram adult female ostrich can reach a speed of 61 kilometers per hour, which is only faster than Tiger is slightly faster. According to Dr. Schaller's calculations, a 230-kilogram male tiger reaches a speed of 56 kilometers per hour. Judging from some shots in the film, it is true that tigers cannot outrun ostriches in open flat areas.
A dozen years ago, avid tiger fans had an argument that tigers are the only cats besides cheetahs that can catch ostriches. This is really ignorant. Lions, leopards and even caracals can’t catch ostriches. There are records of ostrich hunting. The speeds of lions and tigers are about the same. Schaller measured a 150-kilogram female lion at a speed of 59 kilometers per hour.
At the end of "Walking with Tigers", Ron and Julie caught seven antelopes in one day. Some people were worried that tigers entering Africa would eat all the hoofed animals. In fact, cats are ambush predators and do not need to chase long distances. Their food intake is relatively small compared to dogs. Mr. Sundquist made statistics in Chitwan Park and found that a single adult female tiger only needs to capture 45 prey a year.
Research in the Far East and South Asia has found that it is difficult for tigers to control the number of prey under normal circumstances. More often, the number of prey in turn limits the tiger population. Since tigers mainly prey on young or adult males, they are far inferior to wolves in controlling prey. Only when the prey population is at a low ebb due to disease or other reasons, tiger predation may temporarily delay the recovery of the prey population.
The galloping ostrich
Two tigers hunted seven antelopes in one day. This is called killing behavior, and it usually occurs when the movement of prey is restricted. Sheep circling around in a sheepfold are most likely to stimulate the killing instinct of cats. In extreme cases, a lynx or mountain lion can kill hundreds of sheep in a night. The antelopes in Laohu Valley were artificially released. A large group crowded in the valley and were unfamiliar with the environment. They were easy targets for the home tigers. In healthy natural ecosystems, killing usually does not occur.
What is the significance of the Laohu Valley project?
Some opponents claim that tigers cannot gain a foothold in Africa. This view is also biased. Africa lacks tigers because it is blocked by the vast grasslands and deserts of Western Asia. Tiger Valley is located along the Orange River. It has rich vegetation and rugged terrain, which can provide cover for tiger hunting. In addition, there have long been no large beasts such as lions and spotted hyenas in the surrounding areas, so the area is still relatively suitable for tigers to survive.
The environment of Laohu Valley
However, the introduction of tigers, or hybrid tigers, from outside the tiger's native area is very amateurish and has no ecological protection value, only economic value. Therefore, some conservationists criticized Wati as merely manipulating tigers to make movies to make money.
This article is mainly critical of Wati, because he is called a wild tiger and is actually seeking profit. But objectively speaking, Wati does provide his tigers with a high quality of life, which is far better than being locked up in a zoo. I admire him for this. It is human nature to pursue profit, just don’t flaunt it so high and mighty.