Daria (Dasha) Maksimova, a graduate student at the Pacific Institute of Geography in Vladivostok, is the recent recipient of a prestigious 2012 Wildlife Conservation Society Research Fellowship for her project titled “Threats to musk deer population persistence in the Russian Far East”, with work focused in the Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Zapovednik near Ternei,where our Siberian Tiger Project is based. Musk deer, which are famous for having fangs and a musk gland highly prized on black markets, are found throughout much of the higher elevations of East Asia. Musk deer numbers in Russia have declined sharply in the last decade, but the reasons for this remain unclear. Dasha’s work aims to identify the sources of the decline.

Recently, one of our camera traps in southwest Primorye captured a Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx). At first glance this might seem like nothing particularly unusual, because lots of different animals walk past our cameras, but this is noteworthy because this is the first time in the ten years of camera trapping in southwest Primorye that this species has been documented. And not just by us—our colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who have also been working with camera traps in other parts of southern Primorye, have confirmed that this is the first lynx photograph they’ve seen as well. And there it is, walking on a game trail usually walked by tigers and leopards, as though nothing were out of the ordinary. 

At the end of November 2011, a one day training workshop took place at Sikhote-Alin State Nature Biosphere Reserve in Primorski Krai (Russian Far East),  to train inspectors in judicial procedure. The training will hopefully increase the rate of successful prosecutions that can be made against poachers who are apprehended inside the protected area. The training forms part of a collaboration between four important protected areas in Primorski Krai, the Wildlife Conservation Society,  United States Agency for International Development, Phoenix Fund and Zoological Society of London.  The goal of this multi-national collaboration is to build capacity with protected area inspectors to combat poaching of the Amur tiger and to restore the population of this endangered species. Over the course of the year, similar trainings have been held for wildlife inspectors in the implementation of a MIST (Management Information System) based approach to anti-poaching patrols.  This is based on GIS technology and provides technical and strategic input to enhance patrol effectiveness.  Please download the full text here. 

Health experts from Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo, Primorskaya State Agricultural Academy, and Moscow Zoo uncover how distemper may be affecting Siberian (Amur) tigers.
A team of Russian veterinary colleagues and health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo are collaborating to understand how distemper – a virus afflicting domestic dogs and many wildlife species – may be a growing threat to Siberian (Amur) tigers.