South China tiger
In the early 1950s, the South China tiger population was reported to number more than 4,000 individuals in the wild when it became the target of large-scale government ‘anti-pest’ campaigns promulgated by Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. The effects of uncontrolled hunting were compounded by extensive deforestation and probable reduction in available prey, large-scale relocations of urban populations to rural locations leading to fragmentation of tiger populations and increased vulnerability to local extinction from stochastic events. By 1982, an estimated 150–200 South China tigers remained in the wild.