The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata)

[Balam]

Excellent post from the subreddit r/megafaunarewilding (an excellent forum I frequent a lot), the possibility of Caspian tigers persisting in remote areas of Central Asia

Caspian tiger sightings in Tajikistan in the 1990s and later on , ( last confirmed sighting was in 1998 near the border of Afghanistan)

Richard Freeman on Tajikistan sightings of the Caspian tiger, officially considered to have been extirpated in the 1990s, in Animals & Men (November 2018)

Nas Rullo also mentioned that a tiger had been shot by a hunter in the valley. Only the year before, the man had shown him a picture of the tiger on his mobile phone. The authorities investigated but found no tiger.

The story, if true, was dynamite. Tigers did indeed once inhabit Tajikistan, but officially they had been extinct nearly fifty years; the last one being killed in Turkey, in 1970. The Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) was the second largest species of tiger after the Siberian. It had a distinctive long, thick coat and a ruff or short mane around the neck. The Caspian tiger lived in Central Asiatic Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The idea that one was alive in the Romit Valley just one year ago was astounding. We decided to ask local people about the tiger, as well as the gul.

We visited the mosque and spoke to a group of village elders, asking about the gul and then the tiger. The men were very glad to help and we gained much information from them.

The elderly mullahs all said that tigers still existed in the mountains and hunted wild goats and Marco Polo sheep. One was said to have killed five domestic sheep in a pen, about 4-5 years ago. It was seen by the fanner, who trapped it in the pen. The tiger was killed by villagers. They did not know what became of the body.

About 7 years ago, another man from the village saw a tiger. He described it as longer than a dog, with a tail 1 to 1.5 meters long. It was yellow, with white and black stripes.
About 15 years ago, a hunter saw a tiger kill a wild goat by biting it in the neck. The hunter scared the tiger away and it took the goat, leaving only the head.

They insisted that these animals were not snow leopards. They knew that there were three big cats in the Romit: the leopard, the snow leopard and the tiger.

[An old mullah] had heard of sightings of females with cubs. He had also heard a story of a tiger that had been killing sheep and had been trapped in the sheep pen by villagers.

Later that day, we spoke with a park ranger, called Namon. He did not want to be filmed or photographed but he told us of what he had seen. At around 10 am on June 18 2018, just a month ago, he had seen a Caspian tiger. He was as high in the mountains and there was still snow on the ground. He estimated that the tiger was a young adult, about three or four years old. When the animal saw him, it left. It is the only time he had ever seen a tiger in the wild.

Back at camp, Raga Bali told us that he too had seen tigers about seven or eight years ago, near the village of Tavish. On the first occasion, he had seen a female with three cubs on the far bank of the river. They were all feeding on a dead deer. He watched them feed for an hour. The second time, he saw a single tiger wandering along on the far bank of the river. He thought that they came down from higher elevations in winter. Reply