HARBIN, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- Attacking cattle, causing traffic chaos on a highway... Residents in the Lesser Khingan Mountains have encountered a new troublemaker -- a wild Siberian tiger.
Zhang Qingchuan, a cattle raiser in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, spotted a tiger's paw prints in a soybean field close to local farmers' houses on Oct. 4.
Four days later, he unfortunately found his cattle had been attacked and injured by the wild cat. Experts later confirmed that the big cat was likely to be an adult Siberian tiger measuring two to three meters long, based on its paw prints and tooth gouges left at the bloody scene.
On Oct. 10, a wild tiger bumped into a running car on a highway in Heilongjiang and fled the scene quickly before the driver called the police.
When receiving this information, Cui Yan, head of the Heilongjiang Provincial Rescue Center for Wildlife in National Major Forests, began an immediate investigation, discovering some hair and paw prints in the process.
"Through microscopic examination, the specimen can be confirmed to be from a wild tiger," Cui said. "The tiger may get slightly hurt, but considering there's a large quantity of wild boars and foxes nearby as prey, don't worry about its survival."
The Great Khingan and the Lesser Khingan are the most important bases of virgin forest reserves in northeast China, playing a key role in protecting the environment and addressing climate change.
Such reserves have seen environmental deterioration due to logging since the 1950s. The commercial logging there was banned starting in 2014 to assist in the recovery of China's wood resources.
"After 40 years of disappearance, the wild Siberian tiger's presence and long stay reflect an improved ecological change in the hinterland of the Lesser Khingan Mountains," said Zhu Shibing, a Siberian tiger expert from the Heilongjiang Academy of Sciences.
Siberian tigers are one of the world's most endangered species. They mainly live in northeast China and Russia's Far East.
