The Tiger and a Springtime Flare-Up

An adult male tiger near a marking tree (the Durmin River basin)

In mid-March, publications appeared (http://www.izvestia.ru/news/518368, http://www.dv.kp.ru/daily/25851.4/2819813/) about a new edition of the Red Book of Russia being prepared within the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which, under the contract, is to be completed by November of this year. As the headlines make clear, there may be no place for the Amur tiger in the new list of Russia's "Red Book" species. Izvestia quotes Valentin Ilyashenko, head of the Laboratory for Conservation of Biodiversity and Use of Bioresources at the IEE RAS – "for 15 years now, the tiger's numbers in Russia have steadily held at the level of 450 individuals, it has occupied its entire range, and its numbers are now reaching beyond the limits of its range". Well, well… Strongly put. Especially the part about numbers reaching beyond the territory's limits. Though perhaps that's just the cost of journalistic phrasing. But the problem lies elsewhere.

Information in the central press about the possible removal of the Amur tiger from the Red Book of Russia doesn't appear out of nowhere. Cautious Moscow scientists are hardly likely to play games with the status of such an iconic animal, one graced by the attention of crowned heads, Hollywood celebrities, and our new old president. Particularly interesting is the comment by Vyacheslav Rozhnov, deputy director of the IEE RAS and head of the Permanent Expedition of the RAS for the Study of Animals in the Red Book of the Russian Federation and Other Especially Important Animals of Russia's Fauna, given to the KP correspondent – "By international criteria, the Amur tiger may not make it into the Red Book. But in compiling the book, we will proceed from the particularities of our own nature". Scientists of such an administrative rank — and Vyacheslav Vladimirovich Rozhnov, moreover, recently received the title of corresponding member of the RAS — do not toss out such serious statements publicly. It is quite likely that the matter, or at least the framing of it, has been coordinated with Russia's chief defender (or admirer) of tigers, snow leopards, polar bears, and belugas.

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