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Amur Tigers
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This is one good site to find interesting articles concerning Siberian tigers or Amur tigers, whatever people prefer. For me they are always Siberian tigers, since in my childhood they were my favorite animals... old habits are difficult to get rid of... Anyway here one article and link to this site.
Quote: " Doctor of Biological Sciences and Lead Researcher of the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Sergei Naidenko, spoke about the results of the year and plans for preserving the Amur tiger in Russia in an interview entitled “RIA Novosti – the Year of the Environment.” Question: Mr Naidenko, please tell us about the Amur tiger’s key features. Sergei Naidenko: The tiger is the largest representative of the feline family, along with the lion. The Amur tiger is one of the largest tiger subspecies. We used to capture animals weighing 212 kilogrammes. However, an adult male may weigh up to 250 kilogrammes. Also, the Amur tiger is the only of the surviving six subspecies that can handle cold winters, so it has the longest and thickest fur of them all. Compared to the tiger groups in other countries, our tigers live in a common area. For example, tigers in India, some 2,000 in all, live in small groups in small isolated pockets. In Russia, the entire group of tigers, which includes up to 500 animals, lives on a vast territory in the Primorye Territory and southern Khabarovsk Territory. Low genetic diversity is another hallmark of Amur tigers. There are two reasons for this. The first is that in the 1940s the tiger population was very low and, according to some estimates, it literally may have been between 30 to 40 tigers, but then began to recover. In biology, this is called a bottleneck effect, when the number of animals falls to a certain level, and the genetic diversity also decreases, but then, after a large population is born from these “founders,” the genetic diversity remains unchanged. The second aspect is a very interesting hypothesis advanced by American researcher Carlos Driscoll in 2010. He assumed that the Amur tiger is genetically close to the Turanian tiger that lived within the territory of the Soviet Union. According to Driscoll, the Turanian tigers gradually resettled from Central Asia to the Far East. The initial number of tigers that resettled was small, and their genetic diversity was also low. " Whole article and others here: http://programmes.putin.kremlin.ru/en/tiger/news/25563
This was one interesting article, imo, and recent too. A tigress and cub managed to cross Amur river and come back from China to Russia. Hopefully things develop in positive direction there so, that poachers could be kept out as much as possible.
 *This image is copyright of its original author Quote: "Lazovka the tigress and her cub have returned home safely after a trip to China, according the Amur Tiger Centre. According to signals from Lazovka’s GPS collar, when spring came, the tigress crossed the frozen Amur River to China several times. Specialists recorded her first short visit to China over a long period in early March 2020. At that time, the ice covering the river was not as thick as in winter, but the tigress returned home safely. Lazovka went to China five times from mid-March to mid-April 2020. On 12 April, Lazovka and her cub once again went to China, where the tigress hunted a boar. On this day, images of the animals were captured by Chinese scientists’ camera trap, which showed that Lazovka had taken her cub with her. A week later, the felines decided to go home, but the ice on the Amur had melted. The tigers wandered along the bank for another week looking for a safe place to cross to Russia. Experts of the Amur Tiger Centre, the hunting supervision service of the Jewish Autonomous Region and the Tiger Centre interregional public organisation, in close cooperation with Chinese scientists and specialists, monitored the tigers’ movements all this time. Employees of the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences, whose Chinese partners carried out scientific work in this region, also helped to check the coordinates in China. Colleagues from the Feline Research Centre (China) also joined the efforts. On 28 April, specialists that check the tigress’ tracking collar signals announced that Lazovka had successfully crossed the river. The coordinates were quickly sent to the hunting supervision service of the Jewish Autonomous Region, whose employees immediately set off for the crossing site. They found fresh paw prints of the tigress and her cub on the bank. “It is quite difficult to see why the tigress likes the foreign bank so much because there are enough hoofed animals in her Russian range and no reasons to worry. Of course, the period from 12 to 28 April was very stressful for us, because it would have been hard to send help for the tigress in case of need when all the borders were closed. Nevertheless, we should note the excellent cross-border cooperation, which helped us to quickly ensure the ‘personal’ protection for the tigress and her cub and receive updates on their life in China,” said Sergei Aramilev, director general of the Amur Tiger Centre. Aramilev also said that the tigress had been looking for a place to return to the Russian bank for quite a long time. “Of course, we didn’t see that with our own eyes, but according to the location data, the tigress made several attempts to cross the river. It looks like the cub was either afraid to swim and she had to return for it, or it got tired and returned to the Chinese bank, forcing her to turn back, too. Nevertheless, they have managed to cross the river, and now it is undeniable that an eight-month-old cub has successfully crossed a water barrier, which is at least 550 metres wide. There have been no such cases recorded so far, and previously, when we found paw prints (or received images) of a tigress with cubs in China, we thought the cubs were born there, because the Amur River was considered an insuperable obstacle for them. Lazovka and her cub have proved this wrong. However, we still hope that they won’t make a habit out of such crossings,” Sergei Aramilev noted." http://programmes.putin.kremlin.ru/en/tiger/news/25994   *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author parkbikin-И снова тигр!На этот раз фотографии хозяина тайги привезли из очередного рейда специалисты оперативного отряда ФГБУ «Национальный парк «Бикин». В конце мая – начале июня они патрулировали территорию в районе посёлка Восток, а также рек Верблюжья, Леснуха и Бисерная. Здесь инспекторам удалось найти следы амурского тигра, которые они изучили и зафиксировали. Также новые кадры, на которых запечатлен хищник, удалось получить с фотоловушек 
Unique footage shows young tigress known as T61F (born in 2016) who brought her first litter of 3 on a lake outing. The group was recorded walking by the side of a lake, a well known watering hole for deer, in the Land of the Leopard nature reserve in the Far East of Russia.
‘It is only logical to see tigers at this site, as usually there is are a lot of deer by the water. Although they are the basis of Amur tigers' diet, this was unlikely a hunting trip’, said Victor Storozhuk from the Science Department of the reserve. ‘The tigers’ fur is visibly wet. So they were having a bath, sadly out of the camera’s view. This is the first time the tigers were filmed by the lake, and as a family,’ he added. The next tiger census in Russia will be held in winter 2021-2022.  |
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