
The staff in the reserve are checking the infrared camera. In the Sino-Russian border and protected areas, there are more than a thousand such cameras. Figure/Hunchun Northeast Tiger National Nature Reserve
At the National People’s Congress last year, General Secretary of the Supreme Leader, who participated in the deliberation of the Jilin delegation, said that this is a good phenomenon after learning that there are 27 wild Siberian tigers in Jilin. The key is to follow the laws of nature and do a solid job.
It’s two sessions a year, and the content of protecting the Siberian tiger has been reflected in the "Outline of the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (Draft)", and the rescue protection of endangered rare wild animals such as tigers, leopards, giant pandas and crested ibis has risen to the national strategy.
In view of the difficulties in the nature reserve, such as the overload of the number of Northeast Tigers, the scramble for land by people and tigers, and the obstruction of migration routes by roads and railways, the relevant departments have formulated plans. In addition to expanding the nature reserve area, they will also start to open up inward migration channels and plan the return of Northeast Tigers to Xiaoxing’ anling and Changbai Mountain.
At 7 o’clock on the morning of March 3, Lang Jianmin stepped on 30 cm thick snow and got into the Woods.
He followed the footsteps of two Siberian tigers to the top of the mountain with a flame bomb that could be sounded when he was attacked by a wild animal, and a knife for self-defense. He found out their activities and went down the mountain after 8 hours.
In this season, hunters follow animal tracks and commit more crimes with iron traps. As the director of the mission center of Hunchun Northeast Tiger National Nature Reserve in Jilin Province, this is his busiest time of the year.
"The more tigers there are, the greater the pressure." Lang Jianmin said.
By the way, cleaning the iron cover buried in the snow aroused his sting. A month ago, on the mountain road leading to the gold and copper mine in Sandaogou, Hadamen Township, a Siberian tiger unfortunately stepped into the iron sleeve and died in the snow, leaving a lot of blood on its neck.
Although the final investigation results have not yet come out, it has reflected the embarrassing existence of wild animals such as the Northeast Tiger: even if they live in nature reserves, they still face man-made injuries.
Return
Hunchun has 27 "settled tigers"
According to the analysis of the images captured by the camera, it is finally determined that there are at least 27 Siberian tigers that are active in China all the year round.
In the IUCN Red List, the Siberian tiger has been listed as an endangered (EN) species.
According to public information, the total number of existing Siberian tigers may be less than 500, mainly distributed in the area from the Sikhote Mountains in the Russian Far East to the border between China and Russia.
More than 100 years ago, Siberian tigers were widely distributed in most areas of coniferous and broadleaved mixed forests in the northeast temperate zone of China and the Russian Far East.
In Lang Jianmin’s view, it was two catastrophes that almost killed the Siberian tiger. One is the deforestation during Japan’s invasion of China, and the other is the felling of trees to support the construction of the mainland in the 1950s and 1960s. With the disappearance of forests, Siberian tigers were forced to leave their homes and move to the Russian Far East.
At the beginning of this century, there were frequent news of the appearance of the Siberian tiger on the Sino-Russian border in the northeast. However, due to the lack of scientific and systematic investigation and study, the number and current situation of the tiger and leopard population in China became an unsolved mystery.
Since 2006, the National Biodiversity Innovation Team of Beijing Normal University (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Normal University Team"), under the leadership of Ge Jianping, vice chairman of the Central Committee of the NLD and vice president of the school, has established the largest single regional infrared camera monitoring network in the world, mainly from the Sino-Russian border in Hunchun to the northeast inland of China, with a sample area of more than 20,000 square kilometers.
Feng Limin, a student of Ge Jianping, Ph.D. in Ecology, School of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, said that they first laid more than 300 kilometers of border transects along the Sino-Russian border to observe the cross-border situation of the Northeast Tiger and Leopard, and then arranged more than 1,200 infrared cameras in a grid with a distance of 3 kilometers multiplied by 3 kilometers.
Through the comparison of the unique patterns on the body of the tiger and leopard, each individual of the Northeast Tiger and the Northeast Leopard can be scientifically and accurately identified, and at the same time, the time, space and other activity rules and information of the tiger and leopard can be collected.
In the end, the camera captured authoritative data: in the whole monitoring area, only the Northeast Tiger population was found in Hunchun National Nature Reserve of Jilin Province and its surrounding areas, from 2012 to — During 2014, at least 27 Siberian tigers were active, including 10 males, 8 females and 9 larvae.
At least 42 Amur leopards, including 20 males, 17 females and 5 larvae. This number has exceeded the reported total number of remaining Amur leopards in Russia.
The observation data also show that the Siberian tiger occasionally appears in Wandashan Mountain, Heilongjiang Province, which is a wandering type and has no stable population.
On November 6, 2013, researchers from Beijing Normal University saw an exciting scene. In the night, No.05 adult female Northeast Tiger walked leisurely through the camera, followed by her 3-month-old cubs, who paused and looked at the camera curiously.
This is the first time in the world that a wild Siberian tiger has produced four cubs from one birth.
"Breeding means that the Northeast Tiger can breed, settle down and form a population in Hunchun area." Feng Limin said.
settle down
Migration is blocked and habitat becomes an "island"
"The only way for the tiger and leopard population to survive and develop in the future is to enter the vast forests in the northeast inland of China to the west."
The most fundamental reason for the return of the Northeast Tiger is the restoration of forest vegetation.
According to the analysis of the team of Beijing Normal University, the natural forest protection project implemented in China in 1998 has made the forest quality in the main forest areas in Northeast China recuperate, and the main prey of tigers, such as red deer, sika deer, wild boar and roe deer, are also recovering rapidly. Last year, Jilin and Heilongjiang completely stopped commercial logging of timber, which laid a more solid foundation for the return and reproduction of the Northeast Tiger.
On the distribution map drawn by the team of Beijing Normal University, the activity area of Northeast Tiger is marked as orange, but it looks like an island.

This orange-red area, including the long and narrow Hunchun nature reserve in the north and south, covers an area of only 1,087 square kilometers, and together with the Russian Leopard National Park bordering it, it covers an area of about 4,000 square kilometers.
The team of Beijing Normal University also found that with the proliferation and increase of tigers and leopards, this area was temporarily overloaded.
"Adult tigers need an average of 5 kilograms of pure meat a day, including many larvae. The bigger the larvae grow, the greater their appetite. If they can’t find a suitable habitat to spread out, they will compete for food." Feng Limin said.
Ge Jianping introduced that the Northeast Tiger has the characteristics of outward development wave after wave in the territory, and there is no jumping. According to Russia’s long-term follow-up study, the average territory of a female tiger is 300 to 500 square kilometers, and the male tiger can often reach thousands of square kilometers. It patrols its territory every day, basically walking 10 to 20 kilometers, but in the northeast, the natural density of its prey is not high, so it needs more territory.
"In Hunchun, it is very good to accommodate 8-10, but now there are just more than 20, which is more than 3 times the carrying capacity and is all squeezed here." Feng Limin said.
Why are these Siberian tigers squeezed in this "isolated island" area?
Dr. Feng Limin analyzed that the East and South of the region is the Sea of Japan; The northern part is blocked by a large area of wetlands, highways and railways in the Middle East, which separates it from the main habitat of Siberian tigers in Russia-the Sihot Mountains; The S201 provincial highway in the east runs along the west side of Hunchun Nature Reserve, from Hunchun to Dongning, Heilongjiang Province. The highway, frequent shuttle cars, villages, farmhouses and factories on both sides form an artificial barrier.
"The only way for the tiger and leopard population to survive and develop in the future is to enter the vast forests in the northeast inland of China to the west, but we must first break through the barrier S201." Feng Limin said.
conflict
The battle between man and tiger in the protected area
Some villagers think that tigers are rare animals and should be well protected, while others say that tigers should be driven away.
S201 Provincial Highway and the activities of people along it are like a wall, blocking the way for tigers and leopards to move westward.
According to the latest data provided by Hunchun Nature Reserve, there are 19 villages, more than 2,200 households and more than 6,300 people in the reserve. According to the statistics of remote sensing analysis, there are more than 800 hectares of land in the reserve, and there are 35 contracted ditch systems for forest frogs. In addition, there are about 40,000 grazing cows every year.
This set of data does not include the unprotected area west of S201 Highway, but butch and leopard have spread to this area.
Located in Sandaogou Village, Hadamen Township, on the west side of S201 Highway, villagers can intuitively feel the contradiction between man and tiger.
In the summer of 2015, villager Xing Yanfen raised more than 80 Yanbian yellow cattle, which is the largest farmer in the village. During the inventory, 11 cows were found missing, and the remains of 4 of them were found, all of which were killed by tigers.
Villagers generally adopt the method of free-range. Every year, starting from May, they catch the cattle in the mountains, count them once every two weeks, feed them with salt, and then take them back to the village for captivity when the weather turns cold in October.
After the incident, in order to find the missing cattle and prevent the Northeast Tiger from committing crimes, Xing Yanfen followed her husband and drove around the driveway pulling wood almost every other day, setting off firecrackers all over the mountains to scare the Northeast Tiger away from the cattle.
Xing Yanfen said that they have not received compensation so far. "People in the reserve said that compensation can only be given if animal carcasses are found."
She lost more than 100 thousand for this, complaining that "people rely on mountains to eat mountains, and life is not good."
Zhang Yanlin, a villager, said that one of his cattle was missing, and his body could not be found, so he could not claim compensation. After the tiger committed a crime last year, many villagers in Sandaogou village sold their cattle and sheep.
Lang Jianmin, director of the Propaganda Center of Hunchun Northeast Tiger National Reserve, believes that grazing will lead to many threats. For roe deer, sika deer and wild boar, cattle have completely destroyed the surface vegetation and wild animals have nothing to eat; There are fewer wild animals and fewer tigers; Hungry tigers will also take risks and attack livestock. In Hunchun, there are more than 100 incidents of tigers hurting livestock every year.
"It is difficult for ordinary people to understand the contradiction between man and tiger." Lang Jianmin deeply felt that the most terrible thing is that livestock carry infectious diseases, which will be a devastating blow to the Siberian tiger if it is careless.
However, the growers’ participation in the meeting destroyed the surface, and Hunchun’s "ginseng under the forest" naturally grew in the Woods, with little impact. However, to plant "garden ginseng", a forest must be cut down and planted in a plastic shed. When the contract period expires, nothing grows, resulting in desertification.
For the Siberian tiger, the most direct threat is "hidden weapons", and these hidden "condoms" are everywhere in the forest.
Villagers in Sandaogou can still remember that more than ten years ago, a wild Siberian tiger was trapped by a condom, broke free and killed Yang Chunyan, a young female worker in the local forest farm. The tiger also died of injuries. After this incident was reported at that time, the "dispute between people and tigers" also attracted widespread attention.
Cleaning up "condoms" has become a fixed action of the local protection department. From September last year to January this year alone, Hunchun Nature Reserve cleared 8250 "condoms" and clips. During the same period, 80,097 hunting tools of various types were cleared and collected in Jilin Province, and 268 illegal cases and 314 offenders were investigated.

Although the staff of the nature reserve have repeatedly posted posters to protect wild animals in various villages and conducted lectures on environmental protection knowledge, the results have been minimal. Some villagers think that tigers are rare animals and should be well protected, while others say that tigers should be driven away.
protect
High-speed rail diverted to the protected area
"Northeast Tiger and Northeast Leopard will become the soul of Jilin’s green transformation." This sentence by Bayin Chaolu, secretary of the provincial party committee, impressed Ge Jianping deeply.
Faced with the "islanding" of the Northeast Tiger and the dispute between humans and tigers in the nature reserve, Ge Jianping found the protection problem more and more difficult.
In fact, Ge Jianping and his team have been keeping a low profile for ten years in Hunchun. Even in 2007 and 2010, they took the first photos of wild Siberian tigers and leopards in natural state in China, but he didn’t let these explosive news spread.
He feels that the scientific research data is not solid enough, and he is also worried that too much publicity will cause humans to disturb the Northeast Tiger. However, in 2015, with the deepening of research, Ge Jianping felt that "the country must take the shot, otherwise it will miss the opportunity."
So Ge Jianping contacted Bayin Chaolu, secretary of Jilin Provincial Party Committee.
Ge Jianping recalled that on the same day, at the entrance of the conference room, Bayin Chaolu had two important meetings and only promised to give Ge Jianping a maximum of five minutes to report.
Ge Jianping said that one minute is enough. He only said one sentence: "Your family has 27 tigers and 42 leopards. Do you care?"
Ge Jianping said that the secretary of the provincial party Committee looked at him in surprise. "Ah, no one told me." Then he postponed other meetings, listened to his report all morning, and instructed the director of the provincial development and reform commission to come to the meeting immediately.
As a result, Ge Jianping showed data and demonstration materials that have never been published in the past 10 years.
At this time, the development strategy of Jilin Province is to strengthen wetland protection in the west, develop industry in the middle and make green transformation in the east, but it has not found a "grasping hand" in the east. Ge Jianping was deeply impressed by the words of Bayin Chaolu. "The Northeast Tiger and Leopard will become the soul of Jilin’s green transformation."
At the subsequent National People’s Congress, the General Secretary of the Supreme Leader participated in the deliberation of the Jilin delegation. After learning that there are 27 wild Siberian tigers in Jilin, the Supreme Leader said that this is a good phenomenon. The key is to follow the laws of nature and do a solid job.
Not long after, the General Office of the Central Committee urged Ge Jianping to submit detailed suggestions before the end of May. Chen Xiaoguang, vice chairman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and executive vice chairman of NLD Central Committee, personally led a team to conduct in-depth investigation and summary.
In this survey, Ge Jianping and Chen Xiaoguang accidentally learned that Hunchun will invest more than 20 billion yuan to build "two highs": the expressway from Hunchun to Dongning is roughly parallel to the provincial highway S201, and the National Development and Reform Commission has established a project; The high-speed train from Hunchun to Vladivostok, Russia, will pass through the reserve and will be signed soon.
Ge Jianping was disheartened by this news, but after deliberation, the two decided to rush to Changchun immediately to find Bayin Chaolu, secretary of the provincial party committee, to reflect the situation.
After that, Jilin Province decided to cancel the original highway construction, while the high-speed rail was diverted.
On the Proposal on Implementing Major Ecological Projects for the Restoration and Protection of the Northeast Tiger and the Northeast Leopard in China submitted by the Central Committee of the Democratic League, the General Secretary of the Supreme Leader instructed: "The return of the wild Northeast Tiger and the Northeast Leopard to the Northeast reflects that China has achieved positive results in wildlife protection in recent years. We should seize the current favorable conditions, follow the laws of nature, improve our thinking, make innovative breakthroughs, and do a good job in wildlife protection. The relevant requirements can be reflected in ‘ Thirteenth Five-Year Plan ’ Planning proposal ".
blueprint
Plan the Northeast Tiger to Return to Xiaoxing ‘anling.
According to the protection plan, a tiger and leopard distribution area with an area of over 20,000 square kilometers will be built in China.
How to break the "isolated island" of Northeast Tiger and Northeast Leopard?
On January 27th, 2016, the seminar on the protection strategy of China Northeast Tiger and Northeast Leopard, jointly organized by the NLD Central Committee and Jilin Provincial Government, presented a blueprint for protection.
The trilogy of the blueprint is as follows: within this year, the national nature reserves of Hunchun and Wangqing in Jilin Province and their surrounding areas will be connected into a whole, and a protected area with a continuous forest landscape of 6,000 square kilometers will be built; By 2020, an area of more than 20,000 square kilometers will be built in China, which will carry more than 100 Siberian tigers and 200 Siberian leopards; Set out to plan the action of tiger and leopard returning to Changbai Mountain and Xiaoxing ‘anling.
They invited senior experts to "pick holes".
"Where do immigrants move? After the immigrants in the Three Gorges reservoir area, the survival of these people is also a problem. There are people who don’t immigrate in that area and live in a very fearful environment all day. How to consider it? " Fang Jingyun, an academician of the China Academy of Sciences and an ecologist, bluntly said, "It is my concern to affect more things just to expand the population or for a project."
Zhang Zhibin, a researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and chairman of the International Zoological Society, agreed that the integration of large protected areas should be given priority in the construction of protected areas. However, in order to prevent the spread of diseases, isolation belts are needed in the integration.
"If you can’t solve the livelihood of the people, they will reach out and ask for it from nature. This is the core." Dr. Feng Limin, a student of Ge Jianping, said.
There are still more intractable problems in this area. Hunchun Northeast Tiger Nature Reserve has been listed in the national level, but it is still an enterprise, and it can only be operated with the support of Hunchun Forestry Bureau. The annual personnel expenses and management expenses are around 3 million. After Jilin Province stopped all-round logging last year, the shortage of funds became prominent.
In addition, enterprises do not have the power of administrative law enforcement. "It is difficult to file a case for the general destruction of wildlife that does not constitute a criminal case, and it is difficult to punish it, which weakens the authority of protection work." Lang Jianmin, director of the Nature Reserve Publicity Center, said.
According to the website of the State Forestry Administration, at the end of February this year, Chen Fengxue, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration, conducted an investigation on the system reform of Yanbian National Park and the protection of the Northeast Tiger, accompanied by Director Yan Zhen of the Financial Planning Department. Many sources believe that the national park will be planned with the theme of Tiger and Leopard.
Lang Jianmin believes that national parks are new things, and the key to crossing the river by feeling the stones is to solve the problem of poor system.
On March 5th, Ge Jianping told the Beijing News reporter that the "Outline of the 13th Five-Year Plan (Draft)" put forward the concepts of biodiversity and rescue protection project for the first time, which is a milestone and the key to the construction of ecological civilization. "The comprehensive protection of single animals and plants and biodiversity can explain that ecology, survival and life are indispensable, and it is the interdependence between man and nature, and it is necessary to take the eco-economic development model."
Beijing News reporter Cao Xiaobo from Hunchun, Jilin