Posted 12th September 2001

Asian Real Tigers Need Cooperation

American, Chinese and Russian wildlife experts and several Chinese government agencies have joined forces to save endangered Siberian tigers and Far Eastern leopards. Cooperation takes presidence when it comes to saving life.

An estimated 330 to 370 Siberian tigers exist in the wild, but a single population of only 25 to 40 Far Eastern, or Amur, leopards remains. The Chinese government has decided to create a new nature reserve on the Chinese-Russian border that is expected to increase the amount of suitable habitat for these big cats, which should allow them to recover. A second reserve is under consideration. The agreement by China's Jilin Forestry Department to establish the Jilin Hunchun nature reserve along the border with Russia's Primorski Krai, follows the recommendation of biologists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) based at New York's Bronx Zoo.

The largest cats in the world, Siberian tigers hover near extinction, according to surveys in Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces, cosponsored and organized by WCS, the United Nations Development Program, and the forestry departments of Jilin and Heilongjiang. WCS biologists say creation of the Hunchun Tiger-Leopard Reserve is the first step in a long process of rebuilding tiger and leopard populations in China. "We have large tracts of intact forests in northeast China, and if we protect wild prey populations, tigers will naturally recover in these areas. "With no evidence of breeding females, and only a handful of scattered individuals, it was clear that the only thing preventing extirpation of tigers in northeast China was the existence of a healthy population of the big cats in nearby Russia," Miquelle explained.

Gennady Kolonin, representative of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, promised cooperation with China in all efforts to protect this species by coordinating transboundary conservation efforts. Tiger and leopard habitat is shrinking due to expansion of human population and activities, and tigers that migrate to China from Russia often find little to eat in forests. They prey on livestock, which often results in reprisal killing of the tigers.

Xioachen Yu, a Heilongjiang Wildlife Institute wildlife biologist who has been conducting a tiger monitoring program with the support of WCS, has located areas where tigers cross the international border from Russia into the Wandashan Mountains. "We have tigers in Heilongjiang," Yu said. "If we protect them, I know we can recover the population here." .