Endangered Amur Tigers

Dec. 16, 2003 — Up to three extremely rare Amur tigers have been killed over the last 10 days in Russia's Far East, further threatening the survival of a species on the verge of extinction, a local spokeswoman for the environmental group WWF said Sunday.

While one incident seemed to be a case of self-defense, the second, in which two men killed a female tiger whose cub is considered to have had virtually no chance of survival, was clearly to be blamed on poachers, Yelena Starostina said.

"The inquiry showed that the female tiger — a young, healthy animal — was not behaving in an aggressive manner and that, quite on the contrary, she was trying to hide from her pursuer," she said.

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The poachers, who were arrested by the police, claimed they killed the animal to avenge their dog, which the tiger had allegedly killed.

But Starostina said the real reason for the tiger's killing was greed, as an Amur tiger can fetch up to $15,000 on the black market.

In recent years poachers who killed Amur tigers received only small fines, she added.

Only 450 Amur tigers remain in the Vladivostok area. Poachers have killed at least 75 over the past 10 years.

In September a Russian expert warned that the Amur tiger, whose habitat is also shrinking because of deforestation, could disappear in 20 to 30 years.

The proportion of cubs among the Amur tiger population has fallen from 28.6 percent in 1997 to 9.5 percent in 2003, said researcher Yury Dunichenko, warning that the number was "insufficient for a stable reproduction of the species."