Winter is a season which divides people into different categories. Most people fall into two categories: either those who despise the cold and look for excuses to stay in warm spaces while wishing for summer’s quick return, or those who find joy in the cold season, participate in various winter sports, yet still dream of summer’s warmth.  But there is a third, small group of people, for whom winter is the most active and favorable time to work, a time when many exciting things happen. These people are called field workers.

Thus, the snow that fell in the Southern Primorye in December of 2009, which caused so much inconvenience for city dwellers, allowed us, the field workers of the Far Eastern Leopard Project, to collect much important information about our subjects (the leopards), and, more importantly, it resulted in a meeting- of a sort that happens once in a lifetime, but of which all researchers dream… But we’re getting ahead of ourselves!

 

On February 9^th 2010, the head of Primorsky Krai’s Hunting Control Department notified us of a tiger sighted on a hunting lease near Alekseevka, a village of the Nadezhdinsky district in Primorski Krai. The animal was behaving oddly - most wild tigers, when confronted with people, will either run away, or if cornered, exhibit aggression. But this animal neither ran away or towards people, as if people long ago failed to interest him. As a WCS employee with extensive capture experience, I was asked to assist by immobilizing and examining this strange tiger.

In November 2009, our staff completed the joint WCS/SABZ Siberian Tiger Project fall capture season in the Sikhote-Alin Reserve. A very important method of studying the tiger population is radiotelemetry, i.e. radiotracking of tigers fitted with radiocollars. This method has been used at the Sikhote-Alin Reserve for a long time, and has provided us with practical conservation results for this rare predator.

For this reason, tiger captures are an essential part of our research program. Our methods have been used and approved for large carnivore captures throughout the world, and we use it to safely fit our tigers with radiocollars. Tigers with radiocollars are special because they give us necessary information, based on which we develop tiger conservation plans. These individuals help us carry out an important mission, which we hope will have positive effects on future tiger generations, and on human attitudes towards this magnificent animal.