WWF Joins Important Siberian Tiger Survey

WWF has joined the Russian government and other conservation organizations in the Russian Far East to launch the first range-wide survey of Amur, or Siberian, tigers in almost a decade. The last count, done in 1995 and '96, found an estimated 415-476 Amur tigers.

The results of the latest survey will be released in the spring, after hundreds of biologists, hunters and volunteers have spread out across Russia in search of tiger tracks in the snow. Since the last survey, the population has been under continuing threat from poaching, hunting and logging.

"We're concerned that the population may be decreasing. In the last few years, we've seen less of the prey tigers survive on, and continued poaching of tigers," said Sybille Klenzendorf, lead scientist of WWF's tiger program. "So this survey will also assess the numbers of prey -- like deer and wild boar -- that tigers depend upon."

Under the former Soviet system, a complex and well-regulated army of biologists and professional outdoorsmen were sent into the forests to do the count. In the new political and economic climate, such scientific endeavors are more difficult, and the costs of doing such work have escalated dramatically. So a number of organizations have teamed up to conduct the population count: Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the provincial governments, with additional support from Save the Tiger Fund, the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation and 21^st Century Tiger.

Said Pavel Fomenko, one of WWF's field staff and a survey coordinator: "We need this information to obtain a complete understanding of the present state of the Siberian tiger population -- both to assess whether our past efforts were effective and to plan for future tiger conservation measures."