TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Two rare Malayan tigers arrived at Taipei Zoo from a feline park in France as part of a tiger survival plan, reports said Saturday (March 2).

Serikin and Shima are both 4-year-old females who lived at “Le parc des Felins” east of Paris, an institution that houses 26 types of cat-like animals. They left their home on Wednesday (Feb. 28) on a China Airlines (CAL) flight which arrived in Taiwan Friday (March 1) night, Radio Taiwan International (RTI) reported.

The public will be allowed to see them in April at the earliest after the one-month quarantine and medical procedures, the zoo said in a statement.

After Taipei Zoo joined the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) in 2018, it offered to help maintain the global population of the severely threatened Malayan tiger. A total of 34 institutions across the world take part in related programs, including the Tiger Species Survival Plan (SSP).

Taipei Zoo has one elderly Bengal tiger, but the arrival of the two Malayan tigers is expected to attract a lot of interest from the public. Visitors shoukd understand that the aim of the program is to prevent the extinction of rare species like the two felines from France, the zoo said.