When Kang Wannian, a villager in Yunnan province, was relishing the meat of a rare tiger he shot dead in February, he probably had no idea the dinner would land him in jail and leave his family bankrupt.
On Monday, a court in Mengla county, Yunnan, sentenced Kang, whose village is a stone's throw from a nature reserve, to 12 years behind bars for killing and poaching endangered wild animals, and illegal possession of firearms. The county court also fined him 100,000 yuan ($14,600).
Kang was also ordered to compensate the country for killing and eating what was possibly its last Indo-Chinese tiger on record in the amount of 480,000 yuan.
Kang had not filed an appeal as of yesterday. Convicts normally have 10 days to approach a higher court to appeal against a verdict in line with China's criminal law.
During the trial held late last month, Kang had pleaded not guilty to the charge of poaching and killing the rare tiger, local media reported.
"When I realized it (the tiger) was a carnivore and growling at me, I got scared and shot at it," Kang said.
Kang's lawyer argued that the defendant had "carried the gun and opened fire as an act of self-defense, because two of his family members had fallen prey to wild animals in the past".
In 1979, Kang's father had been bitten in the face by a bear and one of his uncles had been trampled to death by a wild elephant in 1995, the lawyer said.
Kang's home village is located close to a nature reserve, making confrontations with wild animals quite frequent, local media reported.
The prosecutor, however, said Kang had "needlessly" carried a shotgun to hunt for a Shibang, a froglike amphibian found in Yunnan.
Another five villagers who shared the tiger meat with Kang have received sentences of up to four years with fines of up to 20,000 yuan.
In 2007, a conservationist group announced they had caught a glimpse of an Indo-Chinese tiger in a nature reserve near Mengla county. It was believed to be the last Indo-Chinese tiger on record in the country.
Wildlife experts believe Kang killed and ate the very same tiger.
