May 2013. There is some great news from the Russian Far East; the tiger cub that The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) and TigerTime supporters rallied to help has been released back into the wild. On May 9, 2013, the young tigress, who had been found orphaned in 2012, was returned back to the wild in Bastak Nature Reserve, Jewish Autonomous Province.
Cinderella, as the tigress is now known, weighing a healthy 94 kg, was very active and it took more than two hours before the specialists could immobilize her with a tranquillizer dart. They checked her teeth, took her temperature, blood and other samples to test for disease, before transporting her to Bastak Nature Reserve.
600 mile drive
After an 18 hour, 600 mile, drive Cinderella’s trailer was hitched to a cross-county vehicle to take the tigress and tiger specialists to the Upper Bastak River release site. Upon arrival the specialists first checked an automatic remote control on the trailer door and the radio-locating system, instructed everyone around on safety rules and then opened the door. After a three second pause, the tigress jumped out of the trailer and disappeared into thick forest.
Specialists of the A.N Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Inspection Tiger and Wildlife Conservation Society are monitoring Cinderella’s movements with the use of radio telemetry and have already received the first signals from her radio collar. She is moving towards the area where the presence of an adult male tiger has been recorded and the scientists are hopeful that soon a new tiger couple will find each other. Bastak Nature Reserve has plenty of food and is a protected area ensuring the best possible chance for peace and good protection for Cinderella.
“The Phoenix Fund has been concerned about Cinderella’s future since the first days the tigress was found. We, together with International Fund for Animal Welfare, decided to assist in her rehabilitation process,” says Sergei Bereznuk, Director of the Phoenix Fund. “We would like to thank all the people who responded to our call for help. Donations came from all parts of Russia and from abroad including our TigerTime and DSWF supporters in the UK. And, thanks to the professionalism of specialists of the Rehabilitation Centre for Rare Species, we think Cinderella is ready for a new stage in her life. At this very exciting moment we hope that it will not take her long time to get settled in her new home, and that she will increase the wild tiger population by giving birth to young in the future.”
Found in February 2012 at just 5 months old
Cinderella’s story began in February 2012, when people found the young orphaned tigress in freezing conditions on the territory of Borisovskoye hunting lease. She was unable to survive for long on her own. She was then approximately 5-6 months old and was so exhausted that she could be easily handled. Her foreleg and tail were frostbitten. According to the vets, if the female tiger had not been rescued that day, she would have died the next. The cub weighed up to 16 kilograms (35 lbs). After a three-week quarantine the young tigress was transported to the Rehabilitation Centre for Rare Species located in Alekseevka village, Primorsky krai, the construction of which was made possible thanks to the financial support from Russian Geographical Society. At the centre Cinderella was under constant control of veterinarians and specialists of Inspection Tiger and A.N Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar are the only suspects to date in the twin bombings at the downtown Boston finish line of the race, which killed three people and wounded more than 160 others. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police on April 19. Dzhokhar is under arrest at a prison medical facility outside of Boston.
Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said his department had been unaware that the Russian government contacted the FBI in 2011 to warn of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radical jihadist sympathies and his plans to travel to the northern Caucasus and link up with Islamist separatist and terrorist elements from Dagestan and Chechnya. Nor had he been told, he said, that the FBI had questioned the elder Tsarnaev brother and his family, or that Tamerlan subsequently, in 2012, spent six months in the volatile region of southern Russia.
Spoon-billed Sandpipers lay 4 eggs in a simple tundra nest comprised of a shallow depression, most often in mosses, lined with a few dwarf willow leaves. The nest is incubated by both adults on half-day shifts — the male most often during the day and the female at night.
After 21 days of incubation the eggs begin to hatch in a process that takes a day or more to complete. When the young finally emerge from the nest they stumble about on well-developed legs and feet and begin to feed themselves. After the last chick emerges, the male begins his job of leading the chicks as they grow towards independence about 20 days later; the female soon departs and begins moving south. This piece captures the first moments of life at a wind swept Spoon-billed Sandpiper nest.
Video includes commentary by The Cornell Lab’s Gerrit Vyn.
Filmed July 7, 2011 near Meinypilgyno, Chukotka, Russia.
“A series of recent surveys confirms that Bangladesh is still an extremely important wintering ground for Spoon-billed Sandpiper, and we identified Sonadia Island as the main wintering site in Bangladesh”, said Sayam U. Chowdhury, Principal Investigator of the Bangladesh Spoon-billed Sandpiper Conservation Project, a group of young conservationists who monitor the wader population, and work with local communities to raise awareness and reduce threats.
BirdLife Partners and others involved in the “Saving the Spoon-billed Sandpiper” project have been working at Sonadia since 2009, when hunting of waders on the mudflats was identified as a major threat to the fast-diminishing Spoon-billed Sandpiper population. Local hunters have now been trained and equipped for alternative, more secure and sustainable livelihoods. A very successful campaign has led to a better understanding of the importance of shorebird conservation in general, and a sense of pride and custodianship towards the Spoon-billed Sandpiper in particular.
”The work has gone extremely well, and we are trying to really deliver conservation through the local communities,” said Sayam Chowdhury. “Through the provision of alternative livelihoods we have seen hunting reduced to almost zero. Hunters are now working as fishermen, tailors and watermelon producers. An awareness-raising event we held in December 2012 involved close to a thousand people, local government and non-governmental organisation representatives.”
Inamul Haque is Assistant Conservator of Forest (coastal) for Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region, and has been involved in the restoration of mangrove cover on Sonadia. “We have been supporting the Bangladesh Spoon-billed Sandpiper Conservation Project by avoiding mangrove planting in areas that are important for shorebirds”, he explained. “We have also been protecting the key sites from illegal hunting. I am delighted that Sonadia is receiving the international recognition it deserves by being declared an Important Bird Area.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a United States citizen. He is called Chechen. But it seems he never was in Chechnya, a republic within the Russian federation. He spent the last, most recent, half of his life in the USA. And the first half, it seems, in the Russian federation republic of Dagestan, and in the independent former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. It also seems that the Tsarnaev family is not only of Chechen, but also of Avar ancestry.
Czech Republic Ambassador: Don’t Confuse Us With Chechnya
Apr 20, 2013 9:18am
The Czech Republic and Chechnya are nearly 2,000 miles apart, but that didn’t stop people from mixing up their geography.
The Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers, are of Chechen ethnicity. When the similar sounding Czech Republic, a country in Central Europe, began getting buzz online, the country’s ambassador to the United States stepped in to clear up the social media confusion.
“The Czech Republic is trending because idiots are confusing it with Chechnya. If you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry, cry,” Chris Jones, a writer for Esquire and back-page columnist for ESPN The Magazine tweeted.
This reminds me of at least two things. First, people now attacking Czechs for the horrible Boston bombing are of course idiots. But one should also not attack Chechens in general for criminal acts, it seems, of only two people who apparently never lived in Chechnya.
The other thing these idiots now attacking Czechs remind me of is Islamophobes in the USA (and elsewhere). The impact of hysteria and violence against Muslims (overwhelmingly Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorism) was and is not limited to Muslims. It also hurts people who are not Muslims at all. But who are “Muslims” in the eyes of “idiots” (to quote the ABC article on anti-Czech hysteria). People like Sikhs, or Hindus.
Some background on the Chechen issue. Chechens had and have legitimate grievances against Russian czars, who conquered Chechnya in the nineteenth century, and against later Soviet and Russian governments. These grievances have been abused. During Hitler’s 1941-1945 war against the Soviet Union, the nazis tried to steer Chechens in the direction of extreme nationalism, violence and fanatical forms of Islam. Soon after that, during the Cold War, the CIA and other Western secret services tried to steer Chechens in the direction of extreme nationalism, violence and fanatical forms of Islam. Like they also did in Afghanistan.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in Monday’s bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, was captured yesterday after a massive manhunt by law enforcement agencies. Thousands of National Guard troops, FBI and other federal agents, and state and local police placed Boston in an unprecedented lockdown yesterday, after Dzhokhar, 19, and his brother Tamerlan, 26, engaged in a firefight with police.
In the space of a few hours, a major American city was transformed into a virtual armed camp and placed under the equivalent of martial law. The massive scale of the military and police mobilization—replete with Blackhawk helicopters, armored vehicles with machine guns, and SWAT teams pointing automatic weapons—seemed vastly disproportionate to the threat posed by one teenage youth.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, issued a “shelter in place” order early Friday, shut down Boston’s mass transit, and recommended that businesses close. According to the “shelter in place” order, Boston residents had to stay inside with their doors locked and not open them to anyone but a properly identified police officer. The order was progressively extended over some 100 square miles of the Boston metropolitan area, covering approximately 1 million people.
Heavily-armed forces swarmed the city’s empty streets. Local reporters compared the scene to videos of US-occupied Baghdad.
Particularly in Watertown, police went house to house, carrying out searches with assault rifles drawn. The New York Times commented, “Watertown found itself an odd combination of ghost town and police state on Friday morning.”
Bus service between New York and Boston was shut down, and Amtrak train service north of New York City was halted. Taxis were ordered off the streets during the morning hours. The Boston Bruins hockey and Red Sox baseball games were cancelled.
Area universities—including Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Suffolk University, Boston College and University of Massachusetts-Boston—were closed. UMass-Dartmouth, where the younger bombing suspect was a student, was shut down and evacuated, with some students with nowhere to go housed at the local high school. Area public schools were already closed for vacation.
Late Thursday afternoon, police had released videos from security cameras showing the suspects leaving bags near the scene of the bombing. According to the authorities, the Tsarnaev brothers carjacked a Mercedes sports utility vehicle later Thursday night, and police pursued them to the northwest Boston suburb of Watertown. Tamerlan was mortally wounded in a firefight with police, during which he reportedly hurled explosives, and died at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital at 1:35 AM Friday. Dzhokhar fled the scene of the shoot-out.
According to early media reports, police had identified the Tsarnaev brothers as suspects after video emerged of a robbery at a convenience store at 10 PM Thursday. Shortly afterwards, a campus security officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sean Collier, was found dead, shot in his police cruiser. A mass transit security officer was also shot and seriously wounded.
In a video interview with Russia Today, the brothers’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, said she believed her sons had been “set up.” She claimed that the FBI had “controlled” her son Tamerlan over a period of three to five years, monitoring his Internet use and repeatedly visiting their house to question him.
Late yesterday evening, the FBI confirmed that it had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of an unidentified foreign government.
Bostonians had been told the “shelter in place” order was necessary because they had at all costs to avoid Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was described as “armed and dangerous.” At 6 PM yesterday, however, Patrick suddenly lifted the “shelter in place” order at a press conference attended by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Police Colonel Timothy Alben, although they had not apprehended Tsarnaev or any other suspect. They did not explain why they considered the streets to be safer after their press conference than before.
Alben also contradicted earlier reports that the Tsarnaev brothers had carried out the armed robbery at the convenience store.
Shortly after the lifting of the order, however, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding under a tarp in a boat in the backyard of a private home in Watertown, covered in blood. Tactical police forces were called in, set up a perimeter, and fired a series of shots at Tsarnaev before taking him into custody and placing him in an ambulance. He is reportedly in critical condition.
Later in the evening, television outlets showed large numbers of people leaving their homes in relief and celebrating in the streets of Boston.
In carrying out this extraordinary and sinister police state exercise, the Obama administration, the military, the police and state and local officials relied on the media to create a climate of fear and anxiety so as to discourage careful consideration by the public of its long-term implications.
Notwithstanding the horrific character of the crimes involved in the Boston bombings, these implications are very real. The staggering police-military mobilization was clearly the result of years of planning and coordination between various military, intelligence and police agencies that have been relentlessly built up in the decade since the 9/11 attacks. It is now clear that, based purely on their say-so, a major American city can be placed under what would have been called, in a Latin American military dictatorship, a state of siege.
The events in Boston have lifted the veil on the degree to which, behind an eroding veneer of democracy, American society has been thoroughly militarized.
A Twitter message by Ingeborg Senneset from Norway:
Post July 22nd, Norway gave Breivik a good lawyer, a fair trial and human punishment. He took 77 lives, but we kept our dignity.
Boston Marathon suspect may never be able to be questioned, mayor says. Surviving suspect’s injuries prevent him from communicating as FBI faces scrutiny over contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011: here.
5 of the worst reactions to the Boston manhunt, starring Ann Coulter, and Sen. Chuck Grassley: here.
Too early to jump to conclusions over Boston terror bombing: here.
Information coming to light about the background of the Boston Marathon bombings raises many questions about the relationship of US intelligence agencies to the alleged bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: here.
European bison roaming in Germany for the first time for 400 years
April 2013. On 11 April 2013, a fence was cut down in the Bad Berleburg region of Germany. Nothing unusual in that, except the fence was restricting a small herd of European bison (sometimes known as wisent) into the wild in Germany, the first free roaming herd in Western Europe for 400 years.
The opening of the fence released a small herd, consisting of one adult bull, five cows and two calves, into a 10,000 hectare forest. Two of the animals are fitted with radio transmitters to allow scientists to track and follow them. The animals will roam entirely free in the large forests of the Rothaar Mountains around Bad Berleburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. It is hoped that the herd will grow to about 25 animals. The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) called the project a ground-breaking step in nature conservation of Germany.
The herd has been kept in an 88 hectare enclosure for the last three years and has been intensively studied by scientists and universities. They have studied the behavior between man and bison, they have analyzed the role of the bison in the ecosystem and the impacts on biodiversity and also examined the impact on forestry. The conclusion was that: ‘bison are indeed great and powerful, but also very peace loving and shy animals, and present no risk to humans.’ More information can be found on the German bison website.
Well, the play was not by Dostoyevsky. It was a famous novel by Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment; made into a play.
This Dutch video is about Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, as played by Noord Nederlands Toneel.
Dostoyevsky first got the idea for his novel while he was a political prisoner, exiled to Siberia. The main character of the novel, and now of the play, ex-student Rodion Raskolnikov, is partly autobiographical. As Raskolnikov was sent to exile in Siberia as well.
The novel is only very partly autobiographical. As the “crime” for which Dostoyevsky was punished was membership of a discussion group about literature, where there was also criticism of czarist absolute monarchy. While Raskolnikov had killed two women: one “guilty” usurer, and one “innocent” one.
Dostoyevsky, along with other people discussing literature, was condemned to death. 23 December 1849: the firing squad for killing the literary “criminals” had already lined up. Dostoyevsky and his fellow “enemies of the state” were already tied to poles. Then, presto! came a last-minute letter of His Imperial Majesty Nicholas I, sparing the “criminals”‘ lives and sentencing them to hard labour in Siberia instead. This mock execution was cruel psychological torture. Not only czarist autocracy, but also other tyrannical governments used to practice and still practice it.
Dostoyevsky had his feet and hands shackled until his release from prison camp. After the end of his imprisonment, and his subsequent five years of forced military service, Dostoyevsky was able to start his literary work again. But his life did not become happy. The czar’s secret police kept spying on him till his death on 9 February 1881. Financial problems plagued him, especially after his wife and his brother died, and he had to take care of two families as a single parent.
Dostoyevsky’s literary work faced the dilemma of all nineteenth century Russian writers: self-censorship to avoid government censorship, or not getting published. He had to get published because of his desperate financial situation, writing frantically, avoiding conflicts with state authorities. Sometimes, he burnt his manuscripts to prevent trouble with censors. While all the time, the horrors of his mock execution and prison camp years continued to haunt him.
Wikipedia writes that “it is unknown whether Dostoyevsky believed in what he wrote”. This ambiguity led to many speculations about what Dostoyevsky “really” meant, especially in later work, advocating, at first sight, czarist autocracy and its state church.
Is Dostoyevsky’s depiction of Sonya, Raskolnikov’s girlfriend, as a “hooker with a golden heart” maybe a reference to the author’s own situation full of contradictions?
The name “Raskolnikov” is derived from “raskolniki”, a term of abuse for Christians excommunicated from the Russian state church in the seventeenth century. Often refered to as “Old Believers“, they consider themselves the true Orthodox Christians. While Dostoyevsky does not depict his protagonist as a follower of that religion, again at first sight, this might look like a conformist swipe at heterodoxy. But, again, here we don’t know what Dostoyevsky “really” meant with the name.
In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, though a murderer and exiled to Siberia, is finally redeemed by reconciliation with authorities and Christianity. The Noord Nederlands Toneel play chooses another conclusion: his love for his girlfriend Sonya saves Raskolnikov.
The roles on stage in the play, apart from Raskolnikov include Razumikhin, a friend of Raskolnikov; Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov, a drunkard; Marmeladov’s daughter Sonya, a prostitute; Polja, Sonya’s little sister, played by a small girl; Alyona Ivanovna, the murdered pawnbroker; Alyona’s half-sister, Lizaveta, also murdered; Dounia, Raskolnikov’s sister; Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigaïlov, Dounia’s ex-employer. And finally Porfiry, the police detective investigating the murder of the pawnbroker and her sister. On stage, actress Malou Gorter played Porfiry, though women were not allowed to work in the nineteenth century Russian police.
Noord Nederlands Toneel says that Dostoyevsky’s novel is from the nineteenth century. However, a central theme in the book is still important today. Raskolnikov sees poverty and injustice all around him in Russia (in spite of Dostoyevsky’s need for self-censorship). He does not want to be a passive onlooker. He wants to act in a way which he thinks will bring improvement. In practice, that act turns out to be a double murder which keeps haunting his conscience. “Doing nothing is not an option” is a platitude used by supporters of bloody “preventive wars”. Like the Iraq war, which did not cost two lives, like in Crime and Punishment, but over a million lives. The play shows how, at first sight, good intentions are used for bad acts.
A large male tiger with paw prints 11 cm wide was tracked by wildlife specialists of the Hunting Management Department and border guards. The tiger followed a herd of wild boar which was travelling into the nearly untouched broadleaf forests on the right bank of the Ussuri River (or Wusuli, in Chinese). Slowly moving to the south, the tiger arrived at the bank of the Ussuri River and crossed over from Russia to China.
Important refuge
This once again confirms the significance for the protection of the Amur tiger of the newly established wildlife refuge, created in Primorye in October 2012. WWF Russia has been taking an active part in organization of this protected area since 2009.
Reminding of a less-known side to the struggle for fine arts, Russia’s most visited art museum has honoured its staff felines. The Hermitage Museum employs some 60 cats that guard its three million artworks from rats and mice.
The animals’ effort was honoured, among other things, by a cat drawing competition for schoolchildren, the presentation of the “Book of Record of Hermitage Cats”, and the opening of a small exhibit of works by Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen, an Art Nouveau painter noted for his love of cats.
The museum is celebrating Hermitage Cat Day since 1998, but this is the first time the event was marked by a separate art exhibit.
It admitted 2.8 million visitors in 2011, the latest year for which statistics are available.
The tradition of Hermitage cats is, in fact, older than the museum, deriving from the feline brought from Holland to Winter Palace in early 18th century by Peter the Great.
The institution was formalized by Catherine the Great, who, when she founded Hermitage, reassigned some of the palace cats to guard the museum – a job that came complete with a formal rank and a set allowance.
World’s rarest big cat turns the corner as Amur leopard population grows sharply
Amur leopard steps back from the brink – Courtesy of WWF Russia
April 2013. Specialists of Far Eastern Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, “Land of the Leopard” National Park, WWF and Wildlife Management Department of Primorsky Province have finalized the results of snow track leopard census
Best hopes exceeded
The census produced four happy results, and one alarming development. In general the results exceeded all expectations – 48-50 individual leopards were detected, or 1.5 times more than 5 years ago.
The first bit of good news was that, according to census results, minimum leopard numbers were determined as 43-45 adult individuals and 4-5 cubs. In 2007, 27-34 leopards were recorded. Thus, if the slogan “Only 30 left in the wild!” was recently true, today we can say with confidence that not less than 50 Far Eastern leopards now live in the Russian Far East. Although good news, 50 is still a critically small number for the long term survival of the population.
The second piece of good news, the leopard has moved northwards. For many years the Krounovka River was the northern border of the leopard’s range. Three years ago a lonely male left his tracks on the territory of Poltavsky Provincial Wildlife Refuge to the north of that river. This winter a female with a cub was found there. The appearance of the new northernmost cat family is the leopards’ response to the successful organization of proper control over the Poltavsky Refuge by local authorities. Under the new management the reserve became part of the network of protected areas known as “Land of the Leopard”.
The third piece of good news, the leopard has also moved towards the coast. One of the litters was found during the survey was in an area where leopards were previously unrecorded: in the reeds and shrubs of a river delta. This winter there was a high concentration of hare [in] this habitat, and due to the unusually deep snow roe deer moved there as well. Poachers did not realize that wild animals were moving into the area, and so a mother and a cub spent a safe winter by the sea side with plenty of food.
The fourth piece of good news, the leopard has moved to the south as well. One of the leopards was found on the border with North Korea. No leopards have been observed in this area for a century. It is quite possible that the animal crossed the border and has found some suitable habitat in the forests of China and North Korea. This fact highlights the importance of leopard habitat conservation in North Korea.
Amur tigers
The alarming news – the winter census revealed 23 Amur tigers living in the territory, double the number compared to 5 years ago! These tigers are not considered as part of the main Changbaishan population, which itself is distinct from the main Russian Sikhote-Alin population and plays a key role in Amur tiger restoration in China. It is believed that differing habitat preferences allow these two competing predators competitors – tiger and leopard – to coexist. However, due to replacement of red deer by sika deer and low wild boar populations, the prey base of tigers and leopards in southwest Primorye has begun to more and more overlap.
Big cat competition
In such conditions, competition between the two rare cats may become an issue – over the past years at least three leopards were killed by tigers. Unfortunately, the results of the winter census added to these statistics. Tracking in 2013 revealed two cases when a tiger chased a leopard. Only the advanced tree-climbing skill of the leopard saved them from their larger cousins. The researchers should pay some serious attention to the problem of competition between Amur tigers and leopards.
The Far Eastern leopard 2013 census was conducted following a traditional methodology based on measuring print size. By recording the location of all tracks GPS-navigators and taking photos of the prints it was possible to minimize the human factor. Climatic conditions were not easy. On the one hand, deep snow and snow drifts obstructed the work – it was extremely difficult to move along the transects. On the other hand, deep snow and frozen snow crust forced animals to concentrate on local habitats, thus decreasing probability of counting the same animal on different routes. Having fresh snow on the crust allowed for quite precise measurement of all encountered prints.
Litters
Locating litters is a not easy task, particularly under severe winter conditions. Nevertheless, field workers registered 4 females with one kitten each, and one litter that has already broken away from its mother. This figure is considered normal for the given number of leopards, though in 2011 no less than 6 litters were counted. The information collected before the census in the fall and winter allows for the assumption that the real number of litters in 2013 is higher than that observed on the routes.
Chinese border leopards
A relatively large quantity of leopard prints were found along the border with China, but unfortunately it was not possible to conduct a simultaneous census in China. Last year, a minimum of 5 different leopards were photographed by camera traps there; Chinese specialists suggest that 8-11 cats inhabit the Hunchun, Wangqing, and Suiyang Nature Reserves, mostly in the vicinity of registered leopards in Russian border zone.
World’s rarest cat
“The Far Eastern leopard, the rarest cat on the Earth, is stepping back from the brink” – comments Dr. Yury Darman, Director of Amur branch WWF Russia. “We started the recovery program in 2001 and now can be proud of having almost 50 leopards in the wild. The most crucial role is played by the establishment of large unified protected area with huge state support, which covers 360,000 hectares of leopard habitat in Russia. It is now necessary to accelerate the creation of a Sino-Russian trans-boundary reserve that would unify six adjacent protected areas encompassing 6,000 square kilometres and make the goal of a sustainable population of 70-100 Far Eastern leopards and 25-30 Amur tigers a realistic one”.
Census organizers express their gratitude to Russian border guards for taking active part in the census on the territory they patrol. They provided transportation, shared their excellent knowledge of the surveyed area and provided security along the routes.
April 2013. The forests of the Russian Far East are being pushed to the brink of destruction by pervasive, large-scale illegal logging, mostly to supply Chinese furniture and flooring manufacturers, according to a new report by WWF-Russia: here.
In October, 2012 eight bison arrived in four wooden cages at the Teberdinsky reserve having travelled more than 1500 kilometres from the Oksky Reserve in the Ryazan region. Despite the long journey, the bison left the crates quickly and ran deep into the enclosure before beginning to graze on the succulent Caucasus grass.
The bison remained in quarantine in the enclosure for one month before they were released into the wild in the Caucasus Mountains in November. One female bison was provided with a satellite collar so that WWF can track the herd location.
Genetic diversity
Before the arrival of these animals, only 13 bison inhabited the Teberdinsky Reserve. The group is in need of gene refreshments as no new animals have been brought to the sanctuary for more than 40 years.
Tseysky Nature Sanctuary
Also in October, ten bison arrived to Tseysky Nature Sanctuary in North Ossetia from Prioksko-
Terrasny Nature Reserve near Moscow. There are already more than 40 bison in the sanctuary, but for the long-term conservation of the bison it is necessary to refresh the gene pool of this group and introduce new animals to the herd.
Repopulating Russia with bison
The bison is now listed in the Red Book of Russia as a species threatened with extinction. Since 1996, WWF-Russia with support from WWF-Germany has been implementing a program to create a population of wild bison in the forests of the European Russia.
With the help of this program the number of bison in the Orlov, Bryansk, Kaluga and Vladimir regions of Russia exceeded 150 by 2008. This population is considered sufficient for the population to reproduce itself independently in the wild. After that, in 2009, WWF started to restore the European bison populations in the Caucasus Mountains in the south-west of Russia.
The journey of the bison to the Caucasus became possible thanks to the cooperation between the Government of North Ossetia – Alania, WWF and OJSC “Northern Caucasus Resorts”.
