Nation's tiger preservation efforts appear to be a roaring success story

The zoology community is torn on why Africa has no tigers. In fact, many contend that comic strip star Calvin's imaginary feline friend Hobbes and his ilk were never native to the continent in the first place, and therefore there was never an "Out of Africa" moment like we Homo sapiens had some two to three hundred millennia ago.

Most of us are too young to remember that seminal event, however, but we probably know that tigers are not among the big cat populations of Africa today, with lions, leopards and cheetahs being quite the cat's meow on the savannah.

We also probably know that the big striped cats are very adaptable to varying climates. Tigers thrive in ultrahot, humid climes like India, Bangladesh and much of Southeast Asia — notably Indonesia. However, they also manage to exist — though in far fewer numbers — in Eastern Siberia and Northeast China.

So, considering that all tigers had a common ancestor at one point in animal antiquity, it speaks to their tenacity as to how these cagey carnivores can exist in both steaming jungles and icy tundras alike.

However, Siberian tigers, also known as Amur tigers, are among the most endangered creatures on the planet.

This subspecies calls Russia's Far East, Northeast China and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula its current home.

The good news for fans of these graceful, yet deadly predators (at least they're deadly in the eyes of their favorite prey in China — roe deer) — is that Panthera tigris altaica seems to be roaring back to sustainable numbers in the country.

These finicky felines also seem to have self-developed either a vaccine or cure for COVID-19, perhaps Tiger Balm? That's because during the height of the pandemic, in the summer of 2021, some 55 wild specimens of the species were documented in China during a zoological survey, pointing to a population recovery of the critically endangered animal that, not long ago, many feared would disappear from the country.

Experts spotted the tigers via infrared cameras surreptitiously placed in a handful of habitats deemed suitable for the big cats in China's northeast provinces, said a study published in the journal Biological Conservation.

The research was jointly conducted by China's Northeast Forestry University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the World Wildlife Fund and the University of California among others. In 2013, only seven individuals were spotted by the cameras, so the nearly eight-fold surge eight years later met with a roar of approval from those following news related to protected and endangered species.

Furthermore, the findings showed the habitats in question have the potential to support over 310 Siberian tigers.

Though rare due to their small population and particular prey preferences, tiger-human interactions can sometimes end badly for the latter. In 2014, a tour bus driver met his maker while trying to tend to an engine problem when a tiger ambushed him, likely serving as a horrifying spectacle to the passengers on board the broken-down vehicle.

But the country has bent over backward to do its best to keep tiger preserves as far as possible from human populations, and works to keep loggers and hikers properly sequestered from the big cats.

Chinese culture has long had strong cultural and aesthetic affinity for these endangered animals. One of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac is dedicated to the tiger, and the striped and sleek "Kings of the Tundra" are the subject of countless paintings, sketches and sculptures of the master artists of yore.

In Li Bai's (701-762) otherworldly poem about dreaming of travel to a distant town, the big cats (perhaps not endangered at the time) get prominent mention. Li writes: "A tiger strikes the harp, a phoenix rides a chariot; the immortals line up like hemp".

With China's conservational and environmental protection efforts, fans of these fragile but ferocious felines can perhaps attain a semblance of immortality for the latter.