Fiona Macleod
Tigers may soon be roaming free in the foothills of the Drakensberg, like their sabre-toothed cousins did millions of years ago.
Two seven-month-old pure-bred Bengal tigers are already in South Africa, waiting to become part of an ambitious scheme to breed these critically endangered cats on the African continent.
Three tiger subspecies have become extinct in the past 30 years, and estimates of how many there are left in the world range between 3E000 and 7E000. In India, where the largest populations are found, they are under extreme pressure because of burgeoning human populations and the loss of their home range.
Dr Lee Berger, of Wits University’s palaeontology department, says fossil deposits show sabre-toothed tigers were common across Africa up until about a million years ago.
“It’s a scientific fact that tigers were here. They weren’t the same as the Bengal or Asian tigers, but they were here,” Berger says.
“The reasons for their decline are not certain. It appears they died out because of dramatic climatic changes that opened up the savannahs. Tigers are solitary creatures and the more specialised cats like lions, which hunt in prides, managed to outcompete them.”
The two tiger cubs were imported to South Africa three weeks ago from the Bowmanville Zoological Park in Canada. They are presently on loan for three years to film- maker John Varty, who is documenting the plight of the tiger in the modern world for National Geographic.
Varty and his brother, Dave Varty of Conservation Corporation Africa, aim to use the cubs in a pilot breeding project for a new endangered species park.
The object is to “create safe havens for endangered animals and refugee species”. They say the tigers will be front-runners for chimpanzees, gorillas and other endangered species.
The brothers want to set up their haven in the mountainous river catchments in the Drakensberg foothills near Mpumalanga’s Blyde River Canyon. They are tendering for five exotic state forests being sold by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.
Their bid has sparked controversy in the department about the best land use for the catchments. Sources say the forests are costing the department in the region of R50-million a year, and the exotic trees are causing rivers downstream to dry up.
The tigers will range freely in a large fenced-off core conservation area around some of the last remaining indigenous forests in the foothills. The surrounding exotic plantations will be removed to make way for ecotourism developments.
“The tigers can act as a catalyst for tourism, job creation and social upliftment,” say the Vartys.
Working with scientists from the University of Pretoria’s veterinary faculty, the brothers will first keep the cubs on a farm near Lydenburg to see whether they have resistance to the virulent parasites found in Mpumalanga.
John Varty points out that though this will be the first attempt to breed free- ranging tigers in Africa, there’s nothing new about trying to save endangered species by breeding them in other countries. “The Arabian oryx was returned to the wild from the Phoenix zoo, and black rhinos are being bred in Texas.”
Alternate genetic populations of tigers will be valuable in the future when they can be returned to Asia, he adds.
“We’ll be sending a signal to the Indian government that they don’t have a monopoly on the tiger, and are actually failing in their duty to save this magnificent cat.”