The controversial photo of a rare South China tiger has been sent to an "authoritative State institution" to be judged for its authenticity, the State Forestry Administration (SFA) said yesterday.

Officials at the Shaanxi forestry department insisted the tiger in the photo does exist in Zhenping county, although the China Photographers Society confirmed the images were not real.

In October, a farmer from Zhenping claimed he snapped photos of a South China Tiger, a subspecies believed to have been extinct in the wild for more than three decades, in the forest near his home.

However, many scientists and Internet users have denounced the pictures as fake.

(China Daily December 28, 2007)