3 Siberian tiger cubs rescued, 5 tigers killed in Russia.

01/07/2007 00:00:00 February 2007) – Three young tiger cubs have been rescued in the Russian Far East within the past three weeks, and are being cared for by the Tiger Inspection Rehab Center – a project funded by the International Fund for Animal Welfare to help rescue the Siberian tiger. Last weekend two cubs were found by a logger and a truck driver on the roads of the Chuguyewski district in the Primorye region. The young tigers were so exhausted from hunger and frost that they did not flee from the men.

‘These tigers look like they are only about two months old which indicates they were probably abandoned by their mother,’ said Igor Beliatski, of IFAW. ‘These tiger cubs did not yet have the skills to hunt and drink; they would have died.’

The pair are now recovering under veterinarian and medical care, and have been joined by a third female tiger cub named ‘Lapka’. Approximately 4 months old, Lapka, was found with her paw in a trap two weeks ago in Khabarovskiy krai, in the Russian Far East. The loggers that found her later delivered the tiger cub to the Wildlife Rescue Centre in the area.

The cub was weak and exhausted and her paw was severely injured. It is thought that she had survived approximately two weeks with a trap on her paw, and stayed alive by eating snow.

Urgent veterinary help came from Russian Federal Inspection Tiger of the Ministry of Natural Resources, (supported by IFAW). Surgery was performed and 2 digits of her injured right forepaw were removed to avoid blood poisoning.

‘In the recent months 5 tigers, all females, have died because of conflicts with humans. Four were killed by poachers and one was killed in a collision with a bus on a regional land road. This is an alarming sign for the Amur tiger population which is being driven out of the forests and closer to human settlements because of habitat and prey loss, uncontrolled logging and expanding industrial activity in the region,’ said Masha Vorontsova, IFAW Russia country director.

The Russia’s tiger subspecies is the Siberian (or Amur) tiger Pantera tigris altaica. According to 2004-2005 winter tiger census, 431-529 Siberian tigers inhabit Khabarovskiy and Primorskiy districts of the Russian Far East. The Amur tiger is the subspecies which is used to hard snowy winters in the wild, it is listed as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).