Camera in northeast China captures wild Siberian tigress with five cubs, state media says

As of 1:50 p.m. ET, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026

An infrared camera in a national park in northeast China recorded a wild Siberian tigress walking through the forest with five cubs, China's state news agency Xinhua reported Sunday. Xinhua is the only source for this report; GROKsiNEWS.com has not independently verified the footage or the figures below.

The footage was captured late last year in the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, according to Xinhua. A still image released with the report is dated November 2025 and was taken in Hunchun, in Jilin province.

Xinhua called it "the first recorded footage in China of a wild Siberian tiger accompanied by an unusually large litter of five cubs". Recent monitoring shows three of the cubs have left their mother, while two remain with her, the agency said.

Tiger numbers rising, state media says

The number of wild Siberian tigers, also known as Amur tigers, in the park has risen from 27 in 2017 to 72, and the wild Amur leopard population has grown from 42 to 115, according to the latest monitoring data cited by Xinhua.

The park covers about 14,100 square kilometers (about 5,400 square miles) across Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces and was formally established in 2021. It has about 30,000 cameras and 95 wireless base stations, and footage reaches park managers within about a minute, Xinhua reported, citing the company that built the system. More than 290 sections of fencing along the China-Russia border have been removed to reopen wildlife routes, the agency said.

Cameras near villages also send alerts to patrol teams and residents when tigers, leopards, bears or wild boars enter risk areas, according to the report.

Why it matters

Amur tigers are endangered. Xinhua described the scene as rare, and the reported population gains, if accurate, would mean the park is supporting many more of the big cats than it did when it opened as a pilot in 2017.