Rare Tiger Cub Confiscated at Border

A rare white Siberian tiger cub valued at $45,000 was at the San Diego Zoo on Thursday after being confiscated by a U. S. Customs Service agent who found it playing in the back seat of a car headed for Mexico.

“She’s really darling,” said zoo spokesman Jeff Jouett. The cub is healthy, weighs about 15 pounds and is 16 to 18 weeks old, Jouett said. It has blue eyes and brown stripes.

The cub is part of an endangered species--there are only about 200 Siberian tigers left in the wild--and is very tame around people, Jouett said. “She’s very playful, she’s had a lot of human contact,” he said.

The cub, which will be quarantined at San Diego Zoo for 30 days, was found during a routine inspection Tuesday morning when Customs Service agents at the border at San Ysidro pulled over a vehicle that was heading for Mexico, said Bobbie Cassidy, a Customs Service spokeswoman. “The inspector pulled this one car over and there was this tiger,” she said.

It is illegal to export an endangered species without a federal permit, Cassidy said. This case is also unusual because the majority of exotic-animal seizures at the border involve birds and reptiles being smuggled into the United States.

Customs officials made no arrests and have decided not to prosecute the driver, Cassidy said. She would not give further information about the seizure.

The case and the cub has been turned over to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which may decide to prosecute after it finishes its investigation.

Federal officials gave the cub to the zoo, where it will remain unless the Fish and Wildlife Service decides to move it, Jouett said.

According to Jouett, there are about 200 Siberian tigers in the Ussuri region of the Soviet Union. About 60 white tigers are in collections throughout the world, he said.

White tigers, sometimes called “ghost tigers,” are the result of inbreeding in the wild and traditionally are larger than normal tigers.

A white Bengal tiger was at the San Diego Zoo in May, 1984, when it was on loan from the Cincinnati Zoo, Jouett said. The San Diego Zoo does not have white tigers because they do not survive in captivity as well as other tigers, he said.