ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[Wolverine]

@peter of course if the protection on Amur tigers is lifted up all tigers will be exterminated by poachers for a matter of few years. No doubt. In same time tropical tigers have do deal both with poaching and human pressure, Amur ones have to deal only with poaching. Beside the fact as you mentioned inbreeding problems, but this inbreeding problems are going to start ineviatably also with tropical tigers due to ever increasing fragmentation of their habitats and small subpopulations.

Modern Russia and Sovet era have both some advantages and disadvantages concerning Amur tiger protection.

ADVANTAGES OF USSR TO MODERN RUSSIA IN THE FIELD OF TIGER PROTECTION

1. During Soviet era Soviet-Chinese relations were quite bad, Soviet-Chinese border extreemly militarised and almost inprenetable for poachers. Russians poachers in this time didn't have opportunity to smuggle and sell tiger products to Chinese traditional "medicine" - the largest criminal organisation in the planet altogether with Sicilian Mafia and Columbian drug cartels, based entirely on ignorance and superstition.

2. USSR was notorious with the lakh of roads and defficit of personal cars, Soviet people travelled mainly with trains and airplanes, that's why forrests of Ussuriland had very few roads and were vastly annuproachable for motorised poaching.

ADVANTAGES OF MODERN RUSSIA TO USSR IN THE FIELD OF TIGER PROTECTION

1. Now as was already mentioned due to sharp demographic crisis Russia is aging and depopulating and in Ussuriland live with 1/8 less people than in 1990, hundreds and hundreds of villages in Ussuriland are partially or compleetly abandoned or left only with old people to live there because young people are migrating to big cities, nobody want to work on land, youngsters don't want to live on countryside, they want luxury and modernity. This a Russian psyhological phenomenon and quite different from the behavior of many people in North America who want to escape from the big cities to the countryside. Paradoxicaly situation in Ussuriland is following: from one side you have less people living permanently in the forest comparing with late Soviet era, but in same time  there are much more roads, much more private cars and trucks enetering the forest. The mining and logging places have only temporary residents. In Soviet era some forest veterans said that they could walked for a months in Ussuri forest without seeng even one human, now even in the most remote parts of the forest you can see noisy yongsters from neighboring big cities  on Japaneese trucks with guns shooting all game they see (hopefully not tigers).

2. Now Amur tigers have the protection of the most powerfull man in the country - the President himself. During late Soviet era tigers have protection of the government, so called "zapovedniks" (resrves) were like military zones and they were quite efficient, in same time there was no any particular strong man on the top showing particular interes in the tiger protection.

Maybe an Amur tiger numbers - around 500 sounds unsufficient, but Northern tigers has never been numerous and cant be numerous because the productivity of Northern forest is too low in comparison with tropical ecosystems and particurlary India where every square meter of wild nature is teaming with life. Reply