African swine fever is threatening Siberian tigers

In Asia, African swine fever is rife. Indirectly it is now endangering the population of the endangered Siberian tiger. Its prey consists of half wild boar. Now dies his prey, it lacks the largest cat in the world in food.

Conflicts with people

If the natural prey fades, hungry tigers could also come to the villages to rip farm animals. This, in turn, would lead to the livestock owners killing the threatened predators, warn environmentalists.

The Bengaltiger (pictured) is even better off than his Siberian relative. When African swine fever on the Amur leads to mass extinction of wild boars, the Siberian tiger goes out of sustenance.

Stop swine fever

The World Wide Fund for Nature therefore calls on governments in China and Russia to take action to prevent the spread of the disease. In the Russian province of Primorye, authorities are encouraging hunters to report dead boars.

Increased safety precautions

The WWF now demands that boar hunt and transport of pork from China, where the disease goes around, should only be allowed to Russia after increased security.

Increase prey pool

The WWF is also working to increase the prey pool of the tiger. Together with the Russian forestry administration, he sets up winter feeding grounds for deer, and in China, deer are raised in human care, and then released into the wild as "tiger feed".

The swine fever reaches the tiger territory

By the end of October 2018, 53 cases of the disease were known in China, at least in 13 different provinces. That would not be dramatic for the tiger, but one case was in Heilongjiang, and this region is adjacent to Primorje, where the tigers live.

Rapid spread

A small number of documented cases also means by no means the all-clear. The pathogen spreads rapidly, over long distances and even in remote areas. Infested boars are not responsible for this: they are sedentary and spread the epidemic only in limited areas. The culprits are uncontrolled transport of infected meat, sausage, feed and slaughter waste, as well as clothing and trucks to which the virus is liable.

Depended on meat

A full-grown Siberian tiger consumes ten kilograms of meat per day to replenish its energy in the cold climate. He eats red deer, wild boar, sika deer, deer, moose, even lynx and bears - sometimes cattle, horses or dogs.

Last retreat

The Siberian or Amur Tiger is the largest among all six surviving subspecies of the tiger, an adaptation to its cold habitat. In the past he lived from Amur in the west to the Japanese Sea in the east. Today, he lives only in an area of ​​half of Germany in the border area between the extreme east of Russia and China. There are fewer than 500 animals.

Too little food

Logging robs him of the habitat, but essential for its decline is the loss of prey. The people in the far east of Russia hunt for their own use, in addition trophy hunters who shoot the crowned deer.

Extermination for Traditional Chinese Medicine

Even the hunt for "remedies" of TCM makes the last tigers on Amur to create. The profit is immense with tiger bones, tiger penguins and tiger meat, which play a major role in Chinese superstition. Corrupt Siberian politicians often play along and let the poachers slaughter the tigers for a fee.

felling

Poaching and illegal logging shake hands: logging not only reduces the habitat of the tiger, which avoids the open areas, it also takes the wild boars their main food, the seeds of the Koreakiefer. The roads for the loggers become highways for the poachers.

An additional threat

The swine fever does not come alone. If it spread, it would be an additional danger to the last, threatened on all sides, Tigers of Siberia. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)