Anti-poaching drive brings Siberia’s tigers back from brink

In February, Pavel Fomenko was told that the body of a young female tiger had been discovered underneath a car parked outside the town of Luchegorsk, in eastern Russia. Fomenko – head of rare species conservation for WWF Russia – took the corpse for examination where he uncovered the grim details of the animal’s death.

The Amur tiger, which is also known as the Siberian tiger, had been caught in a trap and had chewed off a paw to free itself. It was left crippled, unable to hunt, and died of starvation while seeking shelter under the car. “Hearing about this sort of thing is always painful,” said Fomenko. “This was a beautiful tigress.” It is harrowing scenes such as these that conservation groups are hoping will become increasingly rare in the years to come. Later this week, WWF will launch an appeal that aims not just to halt the decline in tiger numbers but to boost them to new levels. The goal is to increase the world’s tiger population in the wild to more than 6,000 by 2022, the next Chinese year of the tiger. In this way, it should be possible to achieve global security for this poster boy and girl of the conservation movement.

The death of the tigress found under the car is tempered by the knowledge that the Amur is part of a global wild tiger population that has started to rise, albeit marginally, after decades of decline. The world lost 97% of its tiger population in a little over a century, but last year, WWF reported that global numbers in the wild had risen from 3,200 in 2010 to about 3,900 in 2016, thanks to the introduction of anti-poaching patrols, habitat protection and other measures.

“The increase in tiger numbers is encouraging but the species’ future in its natural environment still hangs in the balance and numbers remain perilously low,” said Rebecca May, WWF’s tiger specialist. “There now needs to be an enormous push forward to build on this progress. We need commitment and urgent action from all governments of ‘tiger-range’ countries [where tigers still roam free], as well as the passion and unwavering support of the public.”

To fund the campaign, WWF will launch an appeal this week for the public to become “tiger protectors” by donating £5 a month to its programme. Some of this money will be used to expand reserves in the wild where tigers can mix and breed in greater numbers, reversing a trend that has seen the tiger’s range in Asia shrink by nearly 95% over the past 150 years.

This attrition of habitat has continued unabated into recent times. Between 2006 and 2014, the tiger’s already dwindling range shrank a further 40%. By contrast, human populations have soared in tiger-range countries – which include India, Russia, Nepal and nine other Asian nations that now have a human population of 3.2 billion, double the number in 1977.

View image in fullscreen

In addition, poaching, habitat destruction and climate change still pose major threats to the species, problems that are all illustrated by the battle to save the Amur tiger. In 2010, it was estimated that more than 70% of Amur deaths were caused by humans, most of them poachers who use roads built deep into forests by the logging industry to find the tigers.

The Russian government has recently introduced a package of measures aimed at boosting Amur numbers, including restricting logging in tiger habitat areas and increased penalties for poaching and the possession of tiger parts, which are sold to countries in the Far East where they are considered to have medicinal properties.

As head of conservation, Fomenko has been trying to implement these measures, work that sometimes requires spending a month or more in the wild tracking and protecting tigers – including fights with poachers – and investigating sites where poaching and suspicious tiger deaths have occurred. “There’s the risk of getting lost, the risk of getting frostbitten, the risk of encountering a predator. There is a high chance of meeting death,” he said.

The fortunes of the Amur tiger have been more encouraging than most. Its population had dropped to only 20 to 30 animals in the 1930s and the species was on the brink of extinction. Today, there may be more than 500 Amurs in the wilds of Siberia thanks to the work of conservationists such as Fomenko, backed by governments that value good conservation.

It remains to be seen if this reversal can be maintained, although Fomenko is under no illusions about the value of such work: “Tigers are powerful, they are beautiful, they are perfect – and they can co-exist with humans.”