A female tiger, which was illegally kept in an apartment building in Pingdu, is transferred to a wildlife center in Qingdao, Shandong Province on February 26. Photo: IC

While the sky over Pingdu, a county-level city in Shandong Province, was lit up by fireworks to celebrate the Chinese New Year, a scared 7-month-old Siberian tiger jumped from the roof of an 11-story downtown tower block. 

Early in the morning on February 19, a couple found the tiger's body, lying in the building's parking lot with its head cracked open.

The ensuing investigation found that eight tigers, including the unfortunate jumper, were illegally raised by three Qingdao lawmakers.

When lawmaker Yang Wenzheng was found to have illegally raised two tiger cubs in his apartment - one of which was the one that died - he was fined 3,000 yuan ($481), according to The Beijing News on Wednesday.

Cui Jinguang and Zhang Fucai, the other two lawmakers, also received the same fine and all three resigned.

However, none of these lawmakers, who are members of the Qingdao People's Congress, were criminally prosecuted.

The death of the tiger shocked the public as many wondered who would raise such an animal in the middle of the city and who was responsible for its death. Meanwhile, the punishment caused an uproar as it was widely seen as being too lenient.

The tigers' origin

Yang signed a contract with Cui, who owns the Chashan Scenery Park, in July 2014, to raise two tiger cubs as the park could not afford to feed them.

Yang then built two three-meter-high uncovered cages for the cubs on the top floor of an 11-story tower block near a residential area. Late on the night of February 18, the eve of Spring Festival, one of the tigers who was frightened by the fireworks escaped from the cage and then jumped off the building.

Because the building is the tallest in the area and is sound-proofed, people who worked inside the building and nearby residents did not know they had big cats for neighbors, Shanghai-based thepaper.cn reported. 

There has been speculation that Cui bought the tigers from Qingdao Forest Wildlife World, a local wildlife park which is officially allowed to keep tigers, The Beijing News reported.

However, the wildlife park denied this, saying "none of our tigers are sold."

Yang said that he thought of the cubs as his children and felt "very sad" when he found out one was dead.

Cui acquired a pair of Siberian tigers in 2006 from a Tianjin businessman, surnamed Sun, without the authorities' permission and raised them in the Chashan park to attract tourists, according to The Beijing News. The pair had six cubs in 2011.

As Sun passed away in 2012, it is difficult to know where he got the tigers from originally, a Pingdu forestry bureau official, surnamed Man, told The Beijing News.

Keeping a tiger costs at least 200 yuan per day and Cui's park needed to spend some 1,600 yuan a day on feeding its tigers, a Siberian tiger keeper from Qingdao Forest Wildlife World told The Beijing News.

When Cui's park began to suffer financial problems, he gave four of the tigers to his friends, Yang and Zhang, who are locally known as rich businessmen. 

After the cub's death, the forestry authority found that none of the three people had permission to keep tigers.

Although a report on the local government's website in 2011 reported the pair of tigers in Cui's park giving birth to cubs, the forestry officials said "they did not know that Cui's park did not have the qualifications to keep tigers."

The illegally-raised tigers have now been confiscated and transferred to Qingdao Forest Wildlife World.

Anyone who wants to keep tigers needs to submit an application to the local animal protection authority and forestry authority, and then get approval from the national forestry ministry. It is almost impossible for individuals to get such permission, The Beijing News reported. 

Overly lenient punishment? 

The Siberian tiger is listed as a first-class protected species in China and only around 20 remain in the wild in the country.

According to China's Criminal Law, trafficking protected species and related products can lead to more than 10 years in prison.

"The punishment issued by the Pingdu forestry authority is unreasonable," Xie Yan, an associate research fellow from the Institute of Zoology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told thepaper.cn. 

Any person can raise tigers without permission if they only need to pay a 3,000 yuan fine, Xie said. She added that such a move could worsen the wildlife protection situation in China as lenient punishments may encourage the illegal trade. 

A local Pingdu forestry bureau official told thepaper.cn that their punishment was in line with the regulation regarding animal protection. The regulation, which became effective in 1992, says that anyone keeping protected species without permission should face a fine of up to 3,000 yuan.

Li Peijie, deputy head of the Pingdu forestry bureau, said that they decided on the punishment because the tiger's death was an accident and no trafficking was involved in the case, Shandong-based news portal iqilu.com reported.

The authorities have been trying to end the illegal tiger trade in China for many years. A Siberian tiger smuggler in Jiangxi Province was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for illegally purchasing an endangered species, by a court in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province in April 2014.

Later in the same year, an offender, surnamed Xu, was sentenced to seven years and a half in prison by a court in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region for helping local bigwigs to eat tigers in Guangdong Province.

Li Weiming, a Beijing-based lawyer who often fights animal protection cases, told thepaper.cn that even though Yang and Zhang did not "buy" tigers from Cui, they did transport the tigers from Cui's park. "The move should be considered as illegally transporting protected animals, which is a violation of the Criminal Law," Li said, adding that they should be transferred to judicial organs.

Yang raised tigers in a built-up residential area which also posed a risk to nearby residents, Li said. He is also suspected of causing a threat to public security as the runaway tiger could have attacked people if it had not died. 


Newspaper headline: Tiger trafficking