Amur Tigers

[woshiniya]

https://bigcats-ru.livejournal.com/125951.html
The Project Wildlife Conservation Society “Amur Tiger” has been taking place in Sikhote Alinskiy biosphere nature Reserve (north-eastern part of Primorye, Russian Far East) since 1992. The Project includes capturing tigers with the use of Aldrich foot snare for further immobilization and equipping them with radio or GPS collars. Aldrich foot snare is a steel device made of 8mm rod, spring and big screw bolts. The trap is set in a small hollow on the trail that the animal uses; it is attached to a tree and is thoroughly disguised. When the animal steps on a spring, the loop catches its foot. When the tiger is trapped he starts to throw himself and bite the metal device. As a result, tigers seriously injure their paws and teeth, and it usually later results in their death. Russian zoologists started using this snare as well in 2008.

Dalnauka Publishing House (Vladivostok) has published a monograph Diseases and Parasites of Wildlife in Siberia and the Russian Far East under the editorship of I.V. Seryodkin and D.G. Miquelle. Dr. Seryodkin is an associate professor and acting Head of Laboratory in Pacific Institute of Geography, Far-Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Science. Dr. D. G. Miquelle is the director of WCS Russia [1]. Pages 108-117 of the book contain a chapter titled “Tooth breakage in tigers: cause for conflict?” [2]. The authors of the chapter are members of “Amur Tiger” Project launched by WCS: D.M. Goodrich, I.V. Seryodkin, D.G. Miquelle, L.L. Kerley, H.B. Quigley, M.G. Hornocker. They try to address the criticism of WCS centered on dangerous entrapment techniques which often harm animals and consequently provoke aggression towards humans [3..6]. They try to prove this wrong by substantiating their work with studies of 46 tigers caught by Aldrich foot snares. Notably, they discuss only dental injuries, and more specifically “… on injured canines with necrotic pulp and open apex; other teeth are beyond the scope of this research”. Limb injuries are not mentioned at all, while it is intuitive to expect this kind of damage after being caught by paw-catching steel snare.

The conclusions derived from the research are hardly unexpected considering the affiliation of the authors:

1. Dental injuries are rare when using Aldrich snare.
2. Broken canines do not significantly influence fertility, survival or hunting abilities.
3. Most of the “tiger aggression” cases have nothing to do with broken canines.
   

Only two tigers, or 3.7% out of total, turned out to have injured their teeth during the trapping sessions carried out by WCS. Let’s look at the case of a big male tiger caught by WCS in early November 2006 in south-western Primorye (Khasanskiy District). Few days after being caught the tiger was surrounded and shot by hunters who did a game drive while hunting ungulates. The tiger was found near a killed boar and attacked a local hunter. There were two accounts of the case; one claimed that the tiger was shot prior to the attack, while the other claimed that the tiger attacked first. Anyhow, this tiger had been recorded in the area for ten years, never got caught before the incident, and never had conflicts with humans. Game drive is a usual business in Amur tiger habitat. Apparently, the tiger avoided the hunters all his life until this unfortunate day, which brings the question: was the death of the tiger accidental or was the animal inclined to find itself in a situation of high risk and insecurity. The shot tiger had major external damages caused by recent trapping. There were broken canines and paws cut by Aldrich snare, as acknowledged by WCS members. In this particular case there was no chance to cover up the injuries, because the corpse of the tiger was inspected by a third party. Which tiger with dental injuries was officially the second one mentioned out of the total sample is unknown.

So what was going on with other tigers? Were the two tigers mentioned by WCS the only ones which injured the teeth while being caught by Aldrich snares? The teeth of the first tiger were completely destroyed (Fig. 1). Were the other tigers of different kind? Did they lay down calmly waiting to get a dose of tranquillizer? Sure! This is what WCS members claim in their book. We consider that book extremely simplistic and biased, since it claims that tigers with dental problems hunt down bigger prey (the difference is valued about 3kg or 6.6 lbs), successfully reproduce and do not interfere with people. One might think that tigers don’t need canines at all. To support their conclusions, Goodrich et al. compare African lions to tigers, not taking into account totally different ecology, social structure and range patterns. They point out that “Dental injuries caused by trapping were detected only twice”. Interestingly, they also mention that over 70% of trapped tigers were later killed by poachers. Reply