“I have to pinch myself this is happening,” says WWF’s Tigers Alive leader Stuart Chapman. “I look at that photo of the tiger being released into the enclosure, and it gives me goosebumps.”
Chapman is referring to a pioneering project that could see Amur tigers – the big cats found today only in Russia’s Far East – reintroduced to the Ile-Balkhash Nature Reserve, a 7000km2 area of grasslands, forests and wetlands in the south-east corner of Kazakhstan.
If it goes ahead, it will be the first ever tiger reintroduction to a country from where they have been extirpated – tigers have only ever been translocated within national boundaries in the past.
Until 70 years ago, Kazakhstan had a population of Caspian tigers, the race that is now extinct but used to inhabit a large area around the Caspian Sea and large areas to the east. Scientists determined that the most closely related tigers were those now only found in Russia’s Amur region – they had to be sufficiently adapted to the cold, with temperatures plummeting in Ile-Balkhash in the winter to -10˚ to -20˚C.
Amur tigers are larger and have thicker coats than those from elsewhere in Asia, allowing them to withstand such bone-chilling temperatures.
But there is still a way to go. The two tigers taken to the Ile-Balkhash reserve from the Netherlands will not be released – they are expected to breed, and it is their progeny that will become the first wild tigers to inhabit Kazakhstan since the mid-twentieth century.
More breeding stock from zoos will be acquired. Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources said that an agreement with Russia will allow for wild animals from Primorye and Khabarovsk Krai to be brought over (as early as next year), and it’s also expected that tigers that had to be taken into captivity and cannot be returned to their original habitat will “be given the opportunity to start a new life in new environments.”
Kazakhstan has been steadily repopulating the reserve with Bukhara deer and Asiatic wild asses over the past five years – tiger prey – and wild boar numbers have also been recovering. To increase the chances of cubs surviving post-release, live prey will be introduced into their enclosure so they can learn to hunt.
“Cats being cats are instinctively good at catching things, any [domestic] cat owner knows that,” Chapman says. “In the case of tigers, however, the stakes are higher because there’s a greater risk of injury and energy depletion.”
WWF and the Kazakh Government hope that a total population of 50 tigers can be reached by 2035 in an area about one third the size of Wales. Chapman says there has been extensive consultation with local people who fully support the reintroduction plans.
“There was a lot of scepticism when we first came up with this idea,” Chapman adds. “But I believe this story resonates because it gives us hope and because it puts Kazakhstan on the map.”
Main image: Tiger at Stichting Leeuw/Credit: Tessel in 't Veld
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