Police Find Dead Tiger in S.U.V. in Wenzhou At first the police in the southeastern city of Wenzhou suspected the two men were loading a human corpse into their S.U.V. The person-shaped object they were carrying was wrapped in a striped tarpaulin, of the kind commonly seen on construction sites across China, and bound in rope. So Zheng Chuan and Li Kewu, Wenzhou city special police officers who were on their way to a training session Wednesday morning, stopped their vehicle to investigate, the news portal Wenzhou Online reported. Further arousing their suspicions, one of the men immediately fled the scene. But when they unwrapped the tarpaulin, the two officers were stunned to find a dead tiger. The police apprehended the man who had remained by the S.U.V. and compounded the tiger and the vehicle, according to a notice posted on an official Sina Weibo account. The police identified the man in custody as the owner of the S.U.V., a 31-year-old surnamed Wang from Fuzhou, in Jiangxi Province, and said they had detained him on suspicion of illegal trade in an endangered species. The police report said the authorities suspected the carcass to be of a Siberian, or Amur, tiger, one of the world's most endangered animals, and had sent samples to be tested. As of Thursday, the police said the investigation was continuing. No information was released on the suspect who ran away. Under Chinese criminal law, anyone convicted of illegally capturing, killing or trading in endangered species can face fines and 10 years in prison. According to the conservation group W.W.F., there are now only around 450 Siberian tigers left in the wild, mostly in Russia. The Siberian tiger was once thought to be extinct in China because of environmental degradation and poaching, but government and nongovernmental organization efforts to protect the tigers" natural habitat in the northeast have met with some success in recent years. Forestry officials estimated in 2013 that there were 18 to 22 wild Siberian tigers in China. The captive tiger population is much larger. In a report last year, the London-based conservation group Environmental Investigation Agency estimated that China had 5,000 to 6,000 tigers in captivity, including Siberian tigers. Visitors to the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang can take bus tours through a vast outdoor reserve that is home to more than 600 captive Siberian tigers, as well as lions and other large cats. Tigers, solitary animals by nature, can be see congregating in groups at the park, where their diet is fortified by the occasional chicken or sheep that tourists can pay to have released. A significant threat to the tiger population, animal conservation groups say, comes from increasing demand for tiger skins and tiger bone wine, which is thought to have medicinal qualities. Although China has ratified the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which also calls for prohibitions on domestic trade, the Environmental Investigation Agency says that China continues to allow trade in tiger parts from captive tigers. Rising demand from a growing middle class in China has also stimulated trade in other animal products in recent years, including elephant ivory. The government has taken steps to crack down on this illegal trade, most recently winning plaudits from conservationist organizations for destroying more than six tons of confiscated ivory.