A farmer who was found guilty of faking photographs of an endangered tiger has reversed an earlier confession and is now claiming his pictures are real after all.

Zhou Zhenglong, a 54-year-old from a mountainous county in the northwestern Shaanxi Province, vowed that his pictures of a South China tiger, a subspecies that is believed to be extinct in the wild, were not faked, according to a brief letter published by Zhou over the weekend.

Zhou wrote that his first encounter with a tiger was in the summer of 2007. He claimed he was unable to photograph the tiger at that time because his camera had a problem. But he said he was able to take pictures in October of that year, the Guangdong-based New Express reported yesterday.

"I solemnly declare that the tiger picture was real, and was not faked," Zhou wrote.

Zhou was sentenced to two and a half years in prison with a three-year reprieve by a court in Shaanxi on November 17. The Intermediate People's Court of Ankang City also fined Zhou 2,000 yuan (US$292) for fraud and illegally owning 93 bullets.

The court ordered him to return a 20,000-yuan reward to the provincial forestry department.

A purported South China tiger is pictured in this file photo taken by farmer Zhou Zhenglong.

Zhou admitted his guilt during the fraud hearing.

Zhou was released from Shaanxi's Xunyang County Detention Center on November 18. But he will be under police supervision for the next three years.

He demanded in his letter that authorities should carry out a "special appraisal" to determine whether his pictures were real or not.

Zhou's attorney said legal papers will be prepared within three days to launch an appeal to the provincial higher court to reopen Zhou's case, the newspaper said.

Zhou released his pictures to the public in October last year. However, his story soon spurred wide suspicion across the country as a South China tiger has not been spotted in the wild since October 1986.

The Shaanxi forestry department said on October 12 last year that it had confirmed the pictures were genuine and the South China tiger still existed in the wild.

However, experts soon said the photos had been faked and the local media accused officials of endorsing them as a means of promoting tourism in a poor region.

(Shanghai Daily December 22, 2008)