South China Tiger

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. The South China tiger was reported to number more than 4,000 individuals in the wild when it became the target of large-scale government ‘anti-pest’ campaigns. The effects of uncontrolled hunting were compounded by extensive deforestation and probable reduction in available prey, large-scale relocations of urban populations to rural locations leading to fragmentation of tiger populations and increased vulnerability to local extinction from stochastic events.