HONG KONG — Authorities in northern China are searching for a wild tiger, after it attacked two men and left one of them needing surgery.
Officials in Boli County in China’s northernmost province of Heilongjiang said in a statement that a villager was bitten on the left hand late Monday. The man’s injury was so severe that he required a four-hour limb-salvage surgery to avoid amputation, according to state media People’s Daily.
Following the attack, the Heilongjiang Forestry and Grassland Administration held an emergency meeting Monday evening, identifying the animal that caused the injury as a Siberian tiger.
Siberian tigers are the world’s largest cats, can weigh up to 660 pounds and grow to be almost 11 feet long. The endangered big cats are native to northeast China and Russia, living in mountains, forests and river valleys.
Given that Boli County is not a primary habitat for the tigers, the emergency meeting’s participants agreed that incident required “special attention and stronger risk prevention,” according to a statement. A specialist task force has now been dispatched to assist the local government in managing the incident, it added.
Liu Dan, chief engineer of the Hengdaohezi Feline Breeding and Research Center in Heilongjiang, said Wednesday that the tiger who bit the villager may still be in the area.
A second Boli man narrowly escaped a tiger attack Monday, with a CCTV camera picking up his early morning encounter. The video, which went viral on Chinese social media shows the big cat hurling itself against the iron gate of the man’s home.
It’s unclear whether the same tiger was involved in both incidents and authorities have yet to confirm how many tigers are roaming free or whether any of them have been captured.
Anyone injured in Heilongjiang by wild Siberian tigers is eligible for economic compensation, Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park said in a statement. The park added that the village where the incident took place is over 120 miles away from the park and is therefore outside its management.
Conservation efforts by Chinese authorities have significantly boosted Siberian tiger numbers in the wild from 27 to 70 in six years, according to the country’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
From January to June of this year, 17 Siberian tiger were sighted in areas of human activities in China — 19 were seen in the first 11 months of last year — the Chinese Felid Conservation Alliance said in a WeChat post in July.
