Amur tiger family "migrates" to nature reserve in China 30 kilometers of Russian border

VLADIVOSTOK , February 18. /TASS/. Chinese ecologists have obtained unique data about a family of Amur tigers, which moved to a nature reserve in the area of the Tianmenshan mountain ridge in China at a distance of approximately 30 kilometers from the Russo-Chinese state border. A ten-second video featuring the happy tiger family in the Chinese natural forest, has been turned over to the Amur-based department of the World Wild Nature Fund on Wednesday. The video cameras spotted the tigress playing with two tiger cubs, happily unconscious of being watched. Earlier, snapshots of a tigress with cubs had been taken only in the Hunchun nature reserve in close proximity of the state border, spokeswoman for the Amur-based WWF department Yelena Starostina told TASS. This nature reserve, with an overall territory of 1,000 square kilometers, was created in the area bordering the southwest of the Russian Maritime region in 2002. The nature reserve, which became home to tiger and leopard species, was a first step to restore the tiger population in the northeast of China. The tiger "census" taken in 1998 an 1999 showed that tigers had practically vanished in China; and that migration from the Russian territory was the only chance to bring them back. "It is the first time that the snapshots of the tiger family, that settled such a long way off the Russian border, have been taken. The protection and restoration of the tiger population is a common task of Russia and China. A female tiger reproducing tiger cubs is proof that efforts to save the tiger population have been a success," said coordinator of the Amur WWF department Pavel Fomenko, who supervises a program on protection of bio-variety of animal species. Three years ago the environmentalists of the nature reserve in the area of the Tianmenshan mountains launched a project on the restoration of the population of animals of the cloven hoof family, which is the basic food for the Amur Tiger and the Far Eastern Leopard species. Most of the surviving Amur tiger species have been staying on the territory of the Maritime region in Russia. According to the recent animal count, no more than 450-500 animal species have survived, including 80 percent of the animals staying in forests on the Maritime territory. Read more