Six arrested in trafficking tiger cub bought online

Six men were arrested on suspicion of trafficking a Bengal tiger cub in Sanmenxia, Henan province, on Wednesday, Zhengzhou Evening News reported on Friday.

The suspects allegedly bought a Bengal tiger cub for 250,000 yuan ($40,300) on the Internet and were trying to sell it when police received a tip.

The police representative of Sanmenxia Municipal Police Bureau Qu Linghe told the newspaper that they found the cub at a suspect's home in a village near the Sanmenxia highway entrance.

Qu said the tiger cub, whose age is unknown, was found to be sound. It has been taken to the local forest police office.

The case is under further investigation.

Tigers are under first-class protection in China. Hunting, killing and trading tigers are prohibited.

An infrared automatic trigger camera separately videotaped a wild panther and a Siberian tiger in a designated tiger zone in Heilongjiang province, Xinhua reported on July 9, 2014. Zhang Shusen, director of the wildlife protection department of the Heilongjiang Forest Industry Bureau, said the two were captured on video in September, indicating that they might have settled down in the area.

On June 25, 2014, The World Wide Fund for Nature said one of its surveillance cameras photographed a wild Amur tiger heading toward the Sino-Russian border in Suiyang, Heilongjiang province, on March 31. Suiyang is part of an important corridor for Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers, to enter China. It is one of the world's rarest mammals.