"Once secure at the top of the food chain, Amur tigers had roamed unchallenged across nearly three million square kilometers of northeast Asia for thousands of years." In the 19th century, there were approximately 3,000 tigers living mostly on the Russian side of the Amur basin. After decades of hunting and habitat loss, they were almost extinct a century ago. There may have been as few as twenty or thirty. The Soviet Union began to protect them in the 1930s. On the Chinese side of the river, the number plummeted from 2,000 to approximately twenty in the 1980s.
The American–Russian Amur Tiger Project began in 1992. "The research questions they sought to answer were—how much space do tigers need—how much prey do they eat—and how do they die." Their success has led to conservation efforts throughout Asia. The Russians contributed the land and extensive outdoor skills, and the Americans had the technology to track, sedate, and collar a tiger. On February 11, 1992, the Project sedated and tagged the first tiger ever captured and released. She was a young 75 lb. cub who they named Olga. Progress was slow, and the second capture seemed unachievable, and they needed more success to obtain continuing governmental support. They caught their second (Lena) on June 22, the day before their permit was set to expire. She was an average-sized adult female weighing 250 pounds. A September catch (Natasha) was another female, 227 pounds and probably three years old. A bit further along in the fall, the team awoke one morning to find three tigers in their snares near a kill site they had discovered the day before. They were able to sedate and collar two of the three, Kolya and Ektarina. They now had five radio transmitters pouring information into their home base. They realized that their second catch, Lena, probably gave birth to cubs and began to pay close attention. When Lena was killed by a poacher, they captured her four eleven-week-old cubs, who were the size of a cocker spaniel. Two survived and were moved to a zoo in Nebraska.
In early 1994, the team decided to recapture Olga and replace her collar and battery. They tried their first helicopter capture, shot her while hanging out of an ancient Soviet-era copter, and four biologists rappelled down to the site. They were successful, and ultimately Olga was the longest-studied tiger ever tagged and followed, as she was later recaptured a total of six times. However, wary of the ways of the project, she managed her litters to avoid the snares, and none of her cubs were ever captured. Olga was poached in early 2005. She was 14.
The project continued to succeed, and around the turn of the century it began to work on the Chinese side of the Amur River. The Chinese established game reserves on their side of the border. It was the golden era of tiger preservation and management. Beginning in 2006, Russian government support declined, and President Putin began to plan for a Russian-only staffed tiger project. Nonetheless, Dale Miquelle, the man who had been the American lead since 1992, carried on with his American and Russian colleagues. The new century also saw the introduction of GPS support, providing vastly greater amounts of information than the old VHS system. The deterioration in Russian civil society led to increased poaching unlike anything seen in the first decade of the project. More human incursions and roads meant more tigers dead before their time. Fortunately, in 2012, Russia created the Land of Leopard National Park, which, when combined with a Chinese reserve, provided 2,619 square kilometers of peaceful living. Russia also increased the fines for poaching tigers. The same year, they captured a total of six cubs and began the arduous process of training them to live on their own. The first and the oldest was named Zolushka. All six cubs were released far to the west in an area where tigers had once lived, and five prospered.
Right about the time that snares were made illegal, foreigners and foreign NGO's fell out of favor, and the project was wrapped into a larger Russian entity. As tensions over Ukraine mounted, Dale flew to America in 2022. He resides in Montana and travels to Asia assisting in tiger conservation. The Siberian Tiger Project is considered to be wildly successful and a major step in saving the animals from extinction. Russia has even built a tunnel on a major highway to give animals safe passage over the road. There are 500 tigers in the Amur region, but they face ongoing challenges from the human population. Today, as China and Russia become politically closer, the two nations have increased the protected reserve areas on both sides of the Amur, and there is hope that someday the population of tigers will again exceed 1,000. This is a fascinating read, leaving one with admiration for the men and women who have devoted their lives to animal conservation.
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