Before last October, the South China tiger had almost slipped into mythical status as it had been absent for so long from the public eye. In the previous 20-plus years, these tigers could not be found in the wild in China and the number of those in captivity numbered only around 60. The species--a direct descendent of the earliest tigers thought to have originated in China 2 million years ago--is functionally extinct, according to experts.

The big cat's return to the media spotlight was completely unexpected.

On October 12, 2007, a digital picture, showing a wild South China tiger crouching in green vegetation, was released by the Forestry Department of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The image sparked an intensive debate having recently reached fever pitch after an Internet post later accused the photographer, a local farmer in Zhenping County, of taking the picture from a New Year painting sold nationwide several years ago.

Fortunately, not all tiger-related news is as controversial. Save China's Tigers, a non-profit civic organization, announced in mid-November 2007 that a male South China tiger had been born in the Free State Province of South Africa. The parent tigers are undergoing a training program launched by Save China's Tigers in 2003, to teach them how to hunt and prepare for their future release into the wild. The program is expected to last 15 years.

The South China tigers' story is another "conservation-after-destruction" example in the human-animal relationship featuring a long list of already extinct species.

In the early 1950s, an estimated 4,000 of this tiger subspecies, one of the world's smallest and the only one native to central and south China, roamed the country, but its habitat has been constricted by the country's industrialization process.

When China recognized the risk of losing this indigenous carnivore in the mid-1970s and put South China tiger on the list of state-protected animals, the situation seemed irretrievable. In November 1986, a hungry wild South China tiger cub was captured in central China's Hunan Province. Days later, it died due to heavy trap-inflicted injuries. This is the last confirmed finding of a South China tiger in the wild.

At the same time, despite an increase in the number of captive-bred South China tigers, all offspring of two males and four females captured in 1956, their genes have inevitably deteriorated as a result of inbreeding.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, all existing subspecies of tigers--Bengal, South China, Malayan, Sumatran and Siberian--are at risk, most notably the South China tiger.

Against this background, it's no surprise that a "South China tiger fever" has swept the country, stirred up by the controversial tiger picture and the birth of the tiger cub in South Africa. Behind the public enthusiasm are stronger hopes for a biodiversified world.

When answering reporters recently, a spokesperson of China's State Forestry Administration said that citizens' current concern about South China tigers' fate is really encouraging compared with what it was 20 years ago, when people would pay no attention to the killing of a tiger, let alone get excited by a tiger picture.

In this sense, even if the tiger picture eventually proved to be a fake or efforts to salvage South China tigers failed, they have played a positive role in boosting people's awareness of human/nature harmony, which is of vital importance for the survival and future progress of mankind.