A man who killed and ate what may have been the last wild indochinese tiger in China has been sentenced to 12 years' jail, local media reports.

Kang Wannian, a villager from Mengla, Yunnan Province, encountered the tiger in February while gathering freshwater clams in a nature reserve near China's border with Laos.

He claimed to have killed it in self-defence.

The only known wild indochinese tiger in China, photographed in 2007 at the same reserve, has not been seen since Kang's meal, the Yunnan-based newspaper Life News reported earlier this month.

The paper quoted the provincial Forestry Bureau as saying there was no evidence the tiger was the last one in China.

A local court sentenced Kang to 10 years for killing a rare animal plus two years for illegal possession of firearms, the local web portal Yunnan.cn reported.

Prosecutors said Kang did not need a gun to gather clams.

Four villagers who helped Kang dismember the tiger and ate its meat were also sentenced to three to four years in jail for "covering up and concealing criminal gains", the report said.

The indochinese tiger is on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 left in the forests of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma.

- Reuters