The rarest of the world's remaining five subspecies of tigers, recently declared extinct in the wild.

DESCRIPTION: A sleek cat, the adult male averages 8-foot-3-inches tip to tail and just about 300 pounds. It's the only tiger that lives wholly within China's borders. As a subject of Chinese art and literature for 2,000 years, it is revered as a symbol of strength and power as well as the living spirit of the nation's sacred mountains.

STATUS: Critically endangered, on the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, the South China tiger was recently declared extinct in the wild by tiger researcher Ron Tilson, conservation director at the Minnesota Zoo. Tilson was invited in 2001 by China's State Forestry Administration to survey and photograph wild South China tigers. He found none, having visited eight reserves in four provinces from March to December.

Even if some individuals still survive in the wild, they do not constitute a viable population with a long-term future, according to the IUCN Cat Specialist Group. About 50 of this subspecies are alive in captivity in China, raised from a very small founder group. Extremely inbred, these tigers suffer from a serious loss of genetic diversity. The Cat Specialist Group advocates updating and implementing an existing master plan for the management of the captive population.