SHANGHAI: In a sign of changing times in China, rare Siberian tigers in the country’s northeast, usually hunted so their bones can be used in medicines, are instead being “adopted” by wealthy city-dwellers.

Already, more than 20 people from Shanghai alone have agreed to pay money towards the care of the endangered big cats at Heilongjiang White Tiger Reproductive Base, the reserve has said.

“I don’t know whether the money will be enough, but we hope to raise the public’s attention,” project manager Wang Ligang said.

The “adoption” fee of at least 2,000 yuan ($240) a year means that the scheme is only available to the relatively wealthy, although this is nowhere near the annual price of maintaining the hungry 270-kg beasts.

It costs more than 60,000 yuan every year to keep each tiger in captivity — with much of that straight to the carnivores’ stomachs via more than 20 kgs of raw meat a day.

The cash-strapped tiger reserve hopes that eventually, wildlife lovers will sponsor all 280 tigers — the largest group of Siberian tigers in the world — that roam the 360-acre reserve.

While China is becoming increasingly wealthy, extra money is not reaching the nation’s zoos and animal reserves and many, like the Heilongjiang tiger reserve, are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Already heavily in debt, the tiger sanctuary hoped to draw more funds by opening to the public in 1995, but the extra cash is not enough.

It is thus turning to animal adoption, a method common for decades in Western wildlife circles, but still rare in China.

There, many still consider exotic animals good mainly for cooking, turning into traditional medicines, or, at best, gawking at in a zoo. In the Heilongjiang scheme, new “parents” can visit their feline adoptee and give them a name, as well as receive routine updates on their tiger’s well-being.—AFP