At first sight, the edge of the Karoo may seem like a strange place to raise and rehabilitate tigers. A sanctuary spanning some 37 000ha between the southern Free State town of Philippolis and Colesberg in the Northern Cape was the site of the first attempt to breed free-ranging tigers in Africa.
The plan, hatched by local conservationists the Varty brothers, involved “training” captive-bred tiger cubs to become self-sufficient and then returning them to freedom in their native homelands.
In the long term, the project was supposed to snowball into an ambitious attempt to save these majestic cats from imminent extinction in the wild. Three tiger subspecies have become extinct in the past 30 years and estimates of how many there are left in the world range between 3 000 and 7 000.
While the semi-arid landscapes of the Karoo are not typical tiger country, the openness of the land offered the project the right kind of space to allow the tigers to range freely. Perhaps the greatest threat to the future of tigers is the loss of their home range. They need to roam vast areas and are under extreme pressure from burgeoning human populations.
The Vartys launched their tiger project in early 2000 by bringing two Bengal tiger cubs to South Africa. The cubs were sent over on a three-year loan from the Bowmanville Zoological Park in Canada.
The brothers, Dave and John Varty, intended to use the cubs in a pilot breeding project for an endangered species park. The idea was to raise funds for the project through tourism and by filming the tigers – in the process raising awareness around the global plight of these endangered cats.
The Vartys originally intended to base their project in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains in Mpumalanga, reclaiming large areas under commercial forestry for conservation. But after the Mpumalanga Parks Board refused to give them permits for the tigers, they relocated the project to the Tiger Moon Sanctuary on the edge of the Karoo.
The project sparked huge controversy among local and international conservationists. Critics questioned whether there was any conservation value in the project, saying tigers are an alien species in Africa and resources should rather be concentrated on indigenous species.
The Vartys persisted, with John spending many long hours filming the growing cubs ranging over the desert moonscapes of their new home. In two years they learnt how to catch their own prey and live self-sufficient lives in the wild. “Our programme with the Bengals has gone better than anybody expected,” said Dave.
The Tiger Moon Sanctuary was made up of former cattle and sheep ranches, which were restored as far as possible to pre-farming conditions. This included restoration of the veld and wetlands.
Then in 2002 the London- and United States-based organisation Save China’s Tigers announced that it had secured an agreement with China’s State Forestry Administration and the Chinese Tigers Trust of South Africa for the reintroduction of Chinese tigers into the wild.
This plan originally included helping save the world’s rarest tigers, South China tigers, by raising them at Tiger Moon and releasing them into reserves in China. It is estimated there are between10 and 30 South China tigers left in the wild. With the 60-odd others kept in captivity in zoos, the total number left is fewer than 100.
Save China’s Tigers said the agreement called for the establishment of a Chinese tiger conservation model with African reserve management expertise. Indigenous Chinese wildlife would be reintroduced in a pilot reserve in China and tigers would be the flagship species. Conservation of the tigers would be combined with Chinese cultural heritage to create opportunities in ecotourism and for local economic development.
Li Quan, founder of Save China’s Tigers, said she dreamt of seeing reserves in China “whose developments are based on principles of Africa’s reserves”.
Quan and her husband, wealthy businessman Stuart Bray, worked with the Varty brothers for almost 18 months before the relationship turned sour. By the beginning of April 2003, the tiger project had become the subject of bitter – and probably protracted – court action.
Without going into the details of the allegations and counter-allegations contained in the court submissions, it appeared the breakdown in the relationship revolved around money and control of the tiger project. But as the court proceedings unravelled, the philosophy behind the project on the edge of the Karoo remained: to give tigers a future as free-ranging icons of ecotourism. n