I’m late to the get together with this ebook which was printed in Hong Kong in 2022. I used to be thanked by the writer for offering our recollections of what we had been informed in regards to the 1965 sightings and proof for what was presumably and even most likely the final wild tiger to be seen in Hong Kong just a few months earlier than our arrival in 1965.
John Saeki did an ideal job in pulling collectively accounts of sightings and searching of tigers in Hong Kong in the course of the twentieth century. He did so in opposition to a background of an unbelievable diploma of incredulity on the a part of journalists for the native newspapers who by no means appeared to have the ability to get it into their heads that Hong Kong was properly throughout the pure vary of the Tiger or that villagers or expats weren’t all silly in mistaking tigers for home tabbies. Saeki additionally drew on proof from areas and provinces in south China which indicated simply how frequent and harmful to the human inhabitants tigers had been and the way steps had been made all through China to wipe them out, an occupation that reached its peak within the Fifties with skins offered for international foreign money and physique elements for the Chinese language medication commerce.
Tigers in Hong Kong killed individuals: two villagers in 1937 and the policemen Ernest Goucher and Rutton Singh, who had a tiger cornered, in 1915 along with two extra villagers.
Experiences of Hong Kong Tigers have been characterised by every incident, confirmed or in any other case, being of a comparatively brief period.from days to a few months. Hong Kong didn’t have many wild ungulates and the studies usually got here to mild as a outcomes of assaults on home cattle, water buffalo and pigs. Tigers wandering throughout the border from mainland China must work very arduous to search out meals.
It’s potential that not all studies of tigers have been tigers. Giant animals through which the stripes weren’t seen might have been leopards, significantly melanistic ones, which did go to or dwell in Hong Kong previously (see HERE).
Not solely have tigers now gone from South China, have been they there their possibilities of even reaching the Hong Kong border have now additionally gone. Within the mid-Sixties vacationers and newcomers have been taken to the village of Lok Ma Chau to look throughout the closed border space and the Shum Chun, Sham Chung or Shenzhen River into China. There have been fields, extra fields, a small city and hills within the distance. Throughout that entire space is now town of Shenzhen with greater than 17.3 million individuals.
Coincidentally, there was a report from Lok Ma Chau of a tiger being seen at Lok Ma Chau in September 1976. The report stated it was about three ft excessive, 4 ft lengthy and darkish; it had been seen ‘twice in ten days, roaming about after darkish’. The previous questions loom: was {that a} Tiger, a Leopard, a a lot smaller Leopard Cat or massive home cat trying greater at the hours of darkness?
 |
| 1966. The view from Lok Ma Chau into China. The river is the border |
 |
| 2023. The view from the mouth of the river throughout the border with town of Shenzhen behind |
Saeki J. 2022. The Final Tigers of Hong Kong.Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books. Accessible on Amazon