A steel cage-covered jeep barrels through the gates at the Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin, China, and tosses out a scrawny pheasant. A few lazily sunbathing tigers lift their heads in curiosity. In a matter of seconds, one tiger leaps toward the confused creature, which musters up enough energy to flutter away. But, the bird's small victory is short-lived: The tiger, followed by several freeloaders, chases it into the tall grass.
The world's largest tiger-breeding center located in northeastern China has a whopping 800 Siberian tigers, enough to keep the species alive for a century. But their cousins - the South China tigers, a smaller subspecies with shorter, more widely spaced stripes that was the focus of a government eradication strategy in the 1950s - are struggling just to survive a few more years. The situation is dire: Most conservationists have given up hope, and the species was declared extinct ...
