2010 is a year of the tiger and indeed a special year. Since the UK-based charity Save China’s Tigers founded at the Chinese Embassy in London a decade ago, the group has overcome many challenges and achieved unimaginable miracles. The group’s founder Li Quan has also published her photo documentary book Rewilded this week, recording through photography every step she and her team has taken to put her ambitious wildlife conservation project into action.

Born in the year of the tiger and raised in China’s capital Beijing, Li had travelled to the United States to further her education at the Wharton Business School. She flourished in the fashion world, working as an executive for both Benetton and Gucci, but her love for tigers made her chose a dramatic career change.

When some of the world’s most influential and powerful wildlife organizations started saying South China tigers were doomed, that there were too few of them to rebuild a viable species, Li started thinking about how to change the situation. Rapid industrialisation in China is shrinking tigers’ natural habitats so Li came up with the idea of breeding them in South Africa where wildlife habitats are more abundant.

Together with her husband Stuart Bray, a former investment banker, Li established Save China’s Tigers as an international charitable organisation registered in Britain, the US and Hong Kong, and acquired 17 defunct but adjacent sheep farms in South Africa which between them made up some 300 square kilometres of overgrazed land.

Her project won the support of both Chinese and South African governments. For China, Li’s project has superseded the significance of conservation to mean a preservation of national identity. The South China Tiger is a species that originated in China two million years ago and live only in China today. Although it is believed that 40000 tigers lived in China at the beginning of 20th Century (most of them South China Tigers), war, chaos, and habitat destruction have decreased that number to 4000 by 1950.

Large scale tiger hunting followed during the 1950s and 60s, because the government classified South China Tigers as “vermin” along with other predators. Tiger skin and bones also became popular commodities, giving financial incentives for this hunting movement. There are now approximately 80 South China Tigers, all descending from just six wild tigers caught in the 1950s and 60s. Nearly all South China Tigers are now behind bars in zoos, which does not encourage them to breed.

The method Li used to bring tigers away from zoos is called rewilding – an unconventional and innovative technique. It is designed and developed by Li’s team to encourage young tigers to gain hunting and survival skills through trial and error in gradually enlarged areas, with gradually larger sized prey. The first step is to substitute the tigers’ kitchen prepared meals in zoos with freshly killed wild animals still in their skin or hide, so that the tigers will learn to access the flesh inside themselves. They are then encouraged to capture smaller wild prey such as guinea fowl by themselves, and then larger animals.

Li’s rewilding project began as she took the 9 months and 8 months tigers Cathy and Hope to South Africa in 2003. In 2004 they were joined by another pair – TigerWoods and Madonna. In 2007, a four year old male tiger named 327 arrived from Suzhou Zoo. In November 2007 Cathay gave birth to Hulooo, the first South China tiger cub ever born outside China. More births followed. However, in 2009, the first cub sired by 327 was unfortunately taken by a predator seven days after its birth, highlighting the danger of living in the wild, particularly for young cats.

Li recorded each improvement the tigers made with care and joy. She wrote: “I saw them slowly adapting their hunting strategies; abandoning the cheetah tactic of running as fast as possible, learning to stalk patiently, using bushes and trees as cover, and even applying distraction tactics.”

The catastrophe struck in 2005 when Hope died from pneumonia and heart failure. This news grieved Cathy significantly, and Li decided that it is time to put Cathy together with the previously segregated pair TigerWoods and Madonna. She wrote “At the young tigers’ frenziest moment Cathy suddenly jumped up as if she were part of their tumbles. With the fence stopping her, she could only run alongside. A surge of sorrow arose in me. This is when I decided that we must put Cathy together with TigerWoods and Madonna.” The plan initially caused some concerns that the tigers may hurt each other, but Li managed to persuade her team. What followed were not the fights that one would have predicted, but a love triangle between Cathy, Madonna and Tigerwoods, with both Cathy and Madonna giving births to cubs.

South China tiger colony is gradually growing. Li’s eventual goal is the establishment of a similar nature reserve in China. In 2006 the State Forestry Administration of China approved two locations as Chinese Tiger Pilot Reserve candidate sites.

Li's book Rewilded celebrates her team's ten years of hard work and allows her to share her joy and experience with readers all over the world. The book’s forward is written by Justin Wintle, a British author, journalist and broadcaster and also a long-standing friend of Li and Stuart Bray.

The forward described of Li when the tigers successfully survived in South Africa’s wild: “Her delicate Chinese fists clenched with joy. Her critics were wrong. They were dull, unimaginative people who dared not dream.”

Li is one who follows her heart and dreams. Her passion and hard work provide hope for the future of China’s tigers and her innovative technique of rewilding animals could make a significant contribution to the world of conservation.

Cecily Liu

Li Quan photographed with international wildlife artist Linda Wain (left) at Save China's Tigers' 2010 celebration at London's Shanghai Tang Store