Home > News

300-pound Caspian tiger might return from extinction: Scientists to revive species through Siberian tiger

By Mauricia | Jan 19, 2017 06:03 PM EST
The Caspian tiger’, also known as the Persian tiger, Turanian tiger, Mazandaran tiger or Hyrcanian tiger was found in Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, others
(Photo : YouTube/Extinction Blog)

Humans are mostly the main reason why animals become extinct. Caspian tigers weighing more than 300 pounds once wander Turkey up to the northwestern China before becoming extinct in the middle of 1900s. Scientists announced its plans to bring back the massive species from the feline family.

Conservation biologists consider the restoration of the extinct tigers citing an area in Kazakhstan would be an ideal sanctuary to support about 100 large felines in just half a century.

According to the researchers' study from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, there are a lot of factors that caused the huge cats' extinction.  These include the rewards being paid in the former Soviet Union up to the 1930s where poisoning and trapping of the animals were endorsed.

Irrigation projects destructed the reed thickets as well as the tugay woodlands which are the Caspian tigers' natural habitat.  Its dominion consists of coastal and riparian ecological community of trees, shrubs, and wetlands. Its disappearance means the evanescence of all living things that once thrive in it, Mail Online reported.

The plan of reviving the Caspian tigers was published in the journal Biological Conservation. The extinct species will be reintroduced using a subspecies which happened to be the Siberian tiger which genetics is the same to the Caspian tiger.

Authors point out that the Siberian tiger's "phenotype proves adaptable to the arid conditions of the introduction site." In short, they conclude that the huge cats which originally lived in Russia's birch forest might adapt well to the site status in Central Asia where the animals' new population of the massive cat will be introduced.

'The territory of the Caspian tiger was vast,' said Professor James Gibbs, a member of the research team and a conservation biologist who is director of the Roosevelt Wild Life Station at ESF.

The study conveys that the Caspian tiger's meal includes the Bukhara deer, wild boar, and roe deer. In choosing the area for the tiger's new habitat was based on the number of people currently utilizing the land.  Biologists suggested that the best place for the huge cat's re-establishment would be in the Ili River delta and bordering southern coast of Balkhash Lake in Kazakhstan.

© Copyright 2016 AsiaStarz.com. All Rights Reserved.


Real Time Analytics