A Young Siberian Tiger was Reintroduced into the Wild in Primorsky Krai
11:40, 17.09.2009
VLADIVOSTOK. September 17. VOSTOK-MEDIA – Recently a young Siberian tiger was reintroduced into the wild successfully at the Mikhailovsky district, Primorsky Krai, the press service of Phoenix Fund told RIA Vostok-Media.
“We believe the young tiger has a reasonable chance for survival in the wild!” – Alexander Vrish, a project coordinator at Phoenix Fund, said. “Yesterday it took a good deal of time to catch and fix the animal in the Zoological Center of the Institute of Biology and Soil Sciences of the far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FEB RAS) to carry it to the place where it was released in the wild. This means that one of the key tasks of the rehabilitation programme has been accomplished. – The beast is afraid of people and this thing is of great importance. For if the tiger wouldn’t be afraid of human beings it may come close to populated areas and so pose a threat to human life.
Sharing his views on the subject is Sergey Bereznyuk, founder director of Phoenix Fund:
“The reintroduction of the young tiger into the wild is unprecedented, because up until now in Russia there have never been any such attempts to return young beasts of prey into the wild. Surely there were precedents when scientists caught a grown-up tiger on various occasions. After the rehabilitation the grown-up tiger returned into the wild. But this is for the first time that a tiger cub, which lost his mother and was unable to hunt, was reintroduced into the wild after rehabilitation course and put a radio-collar on at that.”
