Wild Siberian Tiger Photographed in China’s Changbai Mountain After 30-Year Absence

For the first time in thirty years, a wild Baekdu tiger has been spotted in China’s Jilin Province, near the North Korean border.

China Daily reported on Thursday that staff members at the Changbai Mountain (known as Baekdu Mountain in Korea) Nature Reserve successfully photographed the wild tiger near a tourist road on the mountain’s western slope.

The staff members discovered paw prints believed to belong to the wild tiger about 984 feet from the area a week prior. They installed nine monitoring cameras and erected warning signs to alert visitors about the tiger’s presence.

Known as the Dongbei Hu in China, the Siberian tiger inhabits northeastern regions of the country, including Changbai Mountain.

The Jilin Provincial Forestry and Grassland Bureau stated that this sighting indicates the tiger’s habitat has expanded more than 124 miles westward from the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, established in October 2021.

The National Forestry and Grassland Administration of China announced in April that the wild tiger population in the park has doubled since 2017 and has stabilized at about seventy. The wild Amur leopard population in the area has also reached approximately eighty.

This news comes after a recent incident in mid-November when a Siberian tiger attacked residents in a village in neighboring Heilongjiang Province. The residents incurred injuries.