A Study on the Tiger Disaster and Interrelated Ecological Environment in Guangxi During the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Guangxi was once an important habitat of the panthera tigris amoyensis in history. Guangxi experienced one serious process of a tiger disaster during the Ming and Qing Dynasties; especially in the middle and late period of the Ming Dynasty, the initial and last stages of the Qing Dynasty, the tiger disaster was even more serious in Guangxi. The tiger disaster during the three periods reflected that the artificial ecological environment of Guangxi presented the natural degeneration to some degree because of the chaos caused by war. Uncultivated field led to the recurrence of the secondary vegetation, which caused the eruption of the tiger disaster. With social stability and reinforcement of exploitation, especially the cultivation of fields on the hill during Qianlong、Jiaqing and Daoguang periods of the Qing Dynasty, ecological environment of Guangxi experienced an enormous evolution, with the percentage of forest and vegetation dropped continually, and the tiger disaster alleviated gradually. Although human avoided the encroachment of tiger, they had to confront the menace of ecological deterioration.