Amur tigers
The Amur (or Siberian) Tiger has the scientific name is “Panthera tigris altaica” and is the largest living cat in the world. The name ’Siberian’ is actually incorrect because these tigers do not live in Siberia but the Russian Far East in the Amur-Ussuri region of Primorski and Khabarovski Krais (States) whilst a few are found across the border in northern China and Korea.
The Tiger in Russia
The Amur tiger has had a difficult time over the past hundred years with a low of less than 50 individuals in the middle of the twentieth century. It gained protection and numbers increased until the present day when numbers may be up to 400 adult individuals.
Habitat
The habitat of the Amur tiger (and leopard) is a unique forested area in the Russian Far East states of Primorski and Khabarovski Krais. In the summer the forests are dense with varied vegetation which is both deciduous and coniferous but in the winter these forests are cold and snow bound. Much of the terrain is mountainous and rugged but is now crossed by roads, human settlements and more recently logging roads. Each adult tiger needs a huge area of land for its territory — up to 40km by 40km for an adult male whilst the female home range is usually smaller. Amur tigers need much larger areas of habitat to survive due to the relative lack of prey so that any particular area of habitat will have a less dense population than a similar size of habitat in one of the tiger ranges such as India or Thailand. For this reason a very large area of healthy habitat is needed to sustain a population of Amur tigers that is viable for the future. Therefore conservation groups are working hard to create protected areas in the Russian Far East and to find ways that humans and tigers can live side by side.
Characteristics
The Amur tiger is the largest and heaviest subspecies of tiger.
To survive winter the tiger has fine but long fur and a layer of fat that allows it to stand the bitter cold. The coat is lighter in colour than other tigers and it has large paws which act rather like snow shoes.
Tiger Prey and Human Hunting
As an extremely powerful and skilful carnivore Amur tigers catch large prey such as deer and boar but they have been known to take domestic dogs from villages when hard pushed to find food. This does lead to tiger/human conflict but part of the conservation work undertaken by ALTA partners is to lessen this effect and to find ways to reduce any such nuisance which ultimately leads to better protection for the tigers themselves. Another way that humans and tigers collide is over hunting prey - which both species target! Russians have a tradition of forest hunting and target the same big prey as the tigers. Therefore the tigers are sometimes seen as competition. To try to turn this situation around AMUR ALTA partner WCS is working with local hunting groups to establish hunting support for tiger conservation. Click here to read in detail about WCS 'Tigers and Hunters' programme WCS
