摘要
Before last October,the South China tiger had almost slipped into mythi- cal status as it had been absent for so long from the public eye.In the previous 20-plus years,these tigers could not be found in the wild in China and the number of those in captivity numbered only around 60. The species—a direct descendent of the earliest tigers thought to have originat- ed in China 2 million years ago—is functionally extinct,according to experts. The big cat’s return to the media spotlight was completely unexpected. On October 12,2007,a digital picture,showing a wild South China
