John Varty & Tiger Canyon

[GuateGojira]

From my point of view, John Varty is a very controversial person. He has (I think) the best intentions but his methods are very questionable, especially by the fact that he is not involved with any scientific institution or any scientists has gone to its place.

Sincerely, I agree in the introduction of tigers in any possible part, but the problem with Varty is that he is not using pure-breed tigers. In fact, following Wilting et al. (2015), it will be more important to breed "Bengal-Indochinese" or "Bengal-SouthChina" mix tigers, as they are still interconnected, but to breed "Bengal-Amur" mix tigers is useless as there is already two perfectly good wild and captive populations and there is no need to mix them. So, the specimens of Varty or useless for conservation and its reintroduction in any place has no sense. Other thing is that there is no real evidence that his tigers are hunting by themselves, based in the opinion of some people that believe that those prey animals don't act normally.

On the other hand, it is the Save China's Tiger project also in South Africa, which shows that reintroduction of captive tigers to the wild is possible and gives good results. They have managed to create a viable wild Amoy's tiger population and scientists are involved in the project. In fact, the only thing that they would need in the future (from my point of view) is the introduction of new genes to avoid genetic problems in the long therm and there is where the study of Andreas Wilting is effective. It has been proved already that the South China tigers in captivity in China (which is the origin of this new wild population) already have Indochinese genes. So, if they could introduce genes from that population, they would be able to increase the genetic health of these tigers. If they are unable to provide Indochinese tiger genes, Bengal tiger genes are also a good option.

The idea of wild Amur tigers in the forests of USA has been a possibility for me since many times, as that type of habitat match very well that of the Amur region. Sadly, it will need a lot of money, permission of the government and the acceptation of the local people (this last one is practically impossible, check how people reacted with the re-introduction of the already native wolves in Yellowstone).


Finally, about the tigers in Africa in the past, there is NO evidence of wild tigers in Africa in any document or any fossils. Deraniyagala reported a skin in Sudan, but the specimen was obviously from the Caspian region. The western part of tiger habitat was the Caspian region and some wandering specimens were reported in the southern range of the European Russia in the medieval age. However, tigers could not pass to Africa as the desert area of Persia make its pass impossible. There is a picture in Egypt of some tiger-like cats, but they were certainly captive specimens from northern regions of Persia. Reply