Search team fails to capture tigers at large
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-06-26 16:38

After half a month's hunt, representatives of a 1,000-strong search team on Saturday said they failed to catch two tigers confirmed to be roaming in a famous tourist sight in Shandong Province.

Local armed police search the Tai Mountain on June 11 upon the report that a adult tiger and a tiger cub were spotted there. [baidu]

"However, it is almost impossible for the tigers to be still in the Mount Tai," Sun Haiyi, an official and animal expert with State Bureau of Forestry, said at a press conference held at the foot of the famous tourist spot in eastern province of Shandong.

Villagers in Mount Tai first spotted an adult and a cub tigers in the mountainous Donglu area on June 9. Days later city officials confirmed the finding and assigned a 1,000-strong search team, composed by armed police and the paramilitaries, to the mountains.

The hunt was carried out around the clock for more than ten days. "The tigers must have gone," Sun said, because no food or tamed animals were reported missing in the nearby villages while wild animals rarely live in Mount Tai.

"Otherwise the tigers should have been dead for starving in a hidden place that is out of our search coverage," he said.

Tigers exist in the wild in China but not in Shandong province.And no zoos in Shandong reported tiger missing in these days. Experts believed these cats roaming in Mount Tai escaped from the zoos outside Shandong or from the tiger-transport trucks that ran past the province.

Large part of the search team will be dismissed soon, while some of them will continue the search, the city official announcedat the press conference.

And the roped-off tourist sight is allowed to open to visitors from Saturday, they said

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