(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-11-19 14:01

BEIJING - A Chinese farmer who has been widely accused of fabricating a photo of a south China tiger in the wild, a species that had not been spotted for more than 30 years, says he will return to the wild to track the big cat and substantiate his pictures.

Zhou Zhenglong [File photo]

Zhou Zhenglong, 52, a former hunter in Chengguan Township of Shaanxi Province's Zhenping County, reportedly took more than 70 snaps of the rare tiger with a digital camera and on film on the afternoon of October 3. Experts confirmed the images showed one of the elusive cats.

But Chinese Internet users and a botanist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences have questioned its veracity, and claimed digital technologies might have been used to alter the image.

An Internet user under the name "Panzhihua xydz" has posted a poster with a very similar image. "I thought Zhou's photo was familiar somehow. Then I found the same picture hanging on the wall of my mother's home in Panzhihua," said the man, surnamed Li.

Li, from the southwestern Sichuan Province, said the two images were "almost the same" except the one on his mother's wall was lighter in color.

Other Internet users reported seeing the same poster for sale and its producer, a company based in the eastern Zhejiang Province, admitted having printed and sold the tiger poster five years ago.

"We have received many calls asking whether our poster was a replica of Zhou's photo," said Luo Guanglin, general manager of Vista Printing and Wrapping Co. Ltd., in Yiwu. "But that's ridiculous. We published the tiger posters at the end of 2002."

Luo refused to comment on the public allegations that Zhou Zhenglong's photo was a fabrication. "As a company we're not in a position to make any judgement to that effect. Nor do we wish to get involved in the dispute."

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