Dozens of volunteers braved freezing temperatures and knee-high snow to clear traps for endangered wild Siberian tigers in northeast China this week.
In six groups, 73 volunteers searched six forest farms in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang in a four-day trap-clearing campaign that ended on Jan.13.
The volunteers included members such as doctors, computer engineers, public servants and college students, and among them there was an Australian named Melissa Pettigrew.
Winter is a tough season for the rare tigers as their prey becomes scarce, and the animals sometimes die from not having enough to eat or by coming into contact with a hunter's bullet or a trap.
Wang Lin, an initiator of the trap-clearing campaign, said that every winter, poachers set iron wire ring traps to catch wild animals like rabbits and roe deer as they can be more easily tracked on snow.
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