10/04/2006 - Vladivostok, Russia
– The first birth of Amur tiger cubs in over a
century has been reported in southeast Siberia,
according to WWF.
Scientists who travelled to the Amur region and
Amurskaya province to check the reports found
traces of cubs they said were about six-months
old and their mother in the snow-covered taiga.
Amur tigers are highly endangered and have been
lost over the years through poaching and habitat
loss from many critical areas and former ranges.
The fact that tiger cubs have been spotted in
this area is seen as welcome news by conservationists.
"The tigress and small cubs could not have
come from another region,” said Yelena Starostina
from WWF-Russia. "This means they were born
here."
The tiger cubs were first spotted in the Zeiskii
Nature Reserve by a driver who claims to have
glimpsed two cats with long tails about the size
of a lynx on a busy road at night.
Upon hearing the news, the reserve’s scientists
Elena Krasikova and Sergei Podolskii from the
Institute for Water and Ecological Problems searched
and then discovered the prints of two cats. One
front paw pad measured 5.5cm, the other 6.5cm.
In October 2005, a hunter reported seeing a tigress
with cubs several kilometers from the area.
However, there were doubts as Far Eastern tiger
researchers could not recall any time within the
last century of a proven case of tigers breeding
in the Amurskaya province.
WWF said tigers found in the Amur region may have
migrated there from the neighbouring Primorye
and Khabarovsk Territories in Russia's Far East,
home to a population of some 450 Amur tigers,
according to the latest count.
