Man detained in China after dead tiger found in car

A dead Siberian tiger wrapped in a plastic bag lying in a SUV car in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang province.

POLICE in China have detained a man over the death of a rare Siberian tiger discovered in the back of an SUV.

Pictures showing officers pulling the black-streaked tiger, wrapped in a plastic bag, out of a white vehicle went viral on China's Internet after they were posted online.

Police in the eastern city of Wenzhou are holding a suspect identified as a former chef in connection with the tiger's death, the local Youth Times newspaper said.

The tiger was seized by police after they spotted the bag and found its shape suspicious, the report said.

Trade in Siberian tigers, also known as Amur tigers, is outlawed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Hundreds of the animals, known scientifically as Panthera tigris altaica, once roamed the lush pine and oak forests of northeastern China.

As recently as the 1970s China and Russia each had about 150 Siberian tigers, but now only around 20 are estimated still to survive in the wild in China.

Conservationists cite increased logging as well as poaching of the species for use in traditional Chinese medicine as among reasons for the dramatic fall in their numbers.

The body of the seized tiger is being stored in a local zoo, the report said, adding that experts judged it to be a male between five and six years old but had not yet determined the cause of its death.

The 31-year-old suspect, from Jiangxi province, was caught when two police officers spotted him and another man clumsily trying to move a long object in a plastic woven bag into a white SUV along the Jiangbin East Road on Wednesday morning.

Local police said the suspect is a former chef, according to Hangzhou-based newspaper Youth Times.

Suspicious about the cargo, the two officers, who happened to drive by the area, pulled over and ordered the two men to open the bag for inspection. The object turned out to be a dead tiger.

Police arrested the ex-chef, while the other suspect fled from the scene and is still at large.

Initial examinations by forestry department specialists found that the adult tiger, weighing about 150kg, was a male Siberian tiger aged between five and six years old. Traces of blood were seen near its mouth, though there were no other apparent wounds on the animal’s body.

A local zookeeper told the press that the tiger was unlikely to have come from the wild or the circus, as circus tigers usually have their canine teeth or “fangs” removed.

Investigators will conduct further examinations on the big cat to determine if it was implanted with a computer chip that would help them match it to a zoo.

It is a criminal offence to trade tigers, particularly Siberian tigers, which are protected under the multilateral agreement Cites, or Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

It is estimated that only 20 or so wild Siberian tigers are left in China.