Cat’s out of the bag in China.
Cat’s out of the bag in China.
BEIJING—Prodded for months by bloggers, officials reveal that photos of tiger in wild were staged; local guide jailed. The photos of the South China tiger taken by a farmer seemed too good to be true. After all, no member of the endangered big cat family had been seen in the wild since the 1960s.
This weekend, local authorities revealed after months of delay that the pictures had been staged using a poster cutout. Police also produced a paw made of wood they said had been used to make prints in the snow.
Zhou Zhenglong, 54, a farmer and local guide who took the photographs, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of fraud. And 13 officials in Shaanxi province in central China have been fired or disciplined, the government announced Sunday.
The revelations in the “paper tiger” case were driven by persistent Internet activists who demanded answers from Zhou and local officials. The case has also spurred a heated debate over coverups, culpability, corruption and whether farmer-and-sometime-guide Zhou was forced to take the fall for powerful officials.
Zhou was paid $2,915 for the photographs by the local forestry department, which was reportedly trying to start a nature reserve, seeking over $1 million from Beijing in funding and pushing to boost tourism. Zhou, who had acted as a guide to animal protection officials, had originally been led to believe the photos might be worth as much as $140,000.
“It took nine months for the government to come up with some answers amidst all the vested interests,” said Hou Jingsong, a legal activist whose group tried repeatedly to file suit only to see its petitions rejected by Chinese courts. “Zhou is a scapegoat, one of the weakest players on the chess board.”
The tale of the tiger started in October when local forestry officials in Shaanxi province held a news conference and released what they said was a photo of the rare tiger. The photo shows the animal facing the camera, his mouth slightly open, peeking out from a tangle of leaves.
But the announcement was immediately greeted with much skepticism. In the Zhou case, an Internet sleuth traced one of the pictures to a 2002 Chinese New Year poster. Much online discussion focused on the strange lighting, the tiger’s unrealistic coloring and features that didn’t seem to change from shot to shot.
“This wild South China tiger is very obedient because it maintains the same posture while keeping that highly controversial leaf right over its head all the time,” said a blogger named “Pro States In Flames.”
The public suspicion led to strong denials of any wrongdoing by Zhou and local officials. “I am willing to guarantee the authenticity of this photograph with my head,” local Animal Protection Bureau Director Wang Wanyun reportedly said.
But public doubts persisted, leading the state forestry administration in December to promise an investigation. Two months later, it apologized but stopped short of characterizing the 71 photographs as fakes, a step it finally took Sunday.
“Our civic society is growing up and starting to have influence,” said Sun Guoyu, a blogger and editor of the Aoyi Web site. “This is progress.”
Zhou told reporters shortly after the pictures surfaced that he hid in the grass with his camera and took several pictures when the tiger appeared near a cave. But at some point it got scared by the flash and roared, he reportedly said, forcing him to retreat behind a rock. After a few minutes of terror, he looked out again and the tiger was gone.
State media this week had another version: that he’d borrowed a digital camera and a poster from a friend, cut out the tiger image and took them up to the Madaozi forest, where he found a clearing and clicked away.
“It is a small area with few tall trees,” Bai Shaokang, a Shaanxi province police spokesman, told reporters Sunday, “not a suitable habitat for a tiger.”
Rare tiger
An estimated 4,000 South China tigers were said to have been alive at the middle of the last century. But a shrinking habitat and a 1950s “anti-pest” campaign took their toll, with the last wild sighting reported in 1964 in Shaanxi’s Qinba mountains.
By 1996, only 30 to 80 remained in the wild, the World Conservation Union estimated. Today, several remain in zoos, but inbreeding has left them with limited genetic diversity.
via Chicago Tribune
Maureen Adams
July 8th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
This is an amazing post. First off, that someone would stage all that and fake it is just mind blowing for me. I didn’t think things like that REALLY happened…I mean, people faking extinct species or Big Foot, etc…..I guess I was wrong. How weird isn’t it? I was also saddened by the disappearance of yet another species. I know it’s happening all over the globe but it still horrifies me. That’s why articles like this are important; they remind people of what we are doing (whether they want to hear it or not). Hopefully enough people will FEEL sad and try to help, in some small way even.
I am going to do a post in the next few weeks on a wounded bird I found and tell the story of what happened. Unfortunately it is a sad story but I will tie it in with a previous experience that ended happily for another bird I saved. Boy, wild (and feral) creatures are fighting so hard for their lives in the wake of human encroachment.
I will let you know when I write the bird post as you might enjoy it. I took photos of the bird as well. I thought of you and was thinking how important this site is. RainforestRobin
July 8th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
robin, we are on the same page over many issues. yes, please let me know when your bird article is up. i will also give you bird focused sites that will appreciate an article from you. cheers.