03 Sep 2008 - The Amur
tiger has leapt into the headlines with
former Russian president Vladimir Putin
shooting a tiger with a tranquillizing gun
in Russia’s far east, before tagging the
tiger with a collar containing a satellite
radio.
Putin, now his country’s
prime minister, was taken on a trip into
the Ussuriisk nature reserve near the Chinese
border to see how researchers monitor the
tigers in the wild. He helped measure the
tiger’s incisors before placing the satellite
transmitter around its neck.
WWF-Russia, active in
efforts to protect the Amur tiger for many
years, is delighted at the wide the tiger
has received.
“This was the same tigress
I tracked in January 2004 in the same place
in Ussuriiskii,” said Dr.Yury Darman, Director
of the Amur branch of WWF Russia. “At that
time the size of its heel was 10cm and it
had a brood of three tiger cubs.”
The Amur tiger, which
can weigh up to 450kg and measure around
three metres from its nose to the tip of
its tail, has come back from the brink of
extinction to its highest population for
at least 100 years.
Only about 40 were alive
in 1950 but nowadays there are around 450,
one of the strongest tiger populations in
the world.
Although this is a healthy
increase, it doesn’t translate to the Amur
tiger being out of danger. Poachers still
target the animal for illegal markets, particularly
in nearby China. Hunters are also a threat,
with an illegal tiger trap being discovered
on an adjacent hunting reserve last year.
And, as Dr Darman explained,
“wild boar population defines the well-being
of the Amur tigers, while the wild boar
depends on a crop of Korean Cedar pine nuts
and Mongolian oak acorns”.
As president, Putin
received pleas from WWF and local residents
to halt the destruction of Korean Cedar
Pine forests, now encroaching on the reserve
to the extent that loggers destroyed a popular
ecological track.
Dr Darman said no state
authority has real responsibility for the
implementation of the 1996 Conservation
strategy of the Amur tiger in Russia with
basic financing still coming from international
funds
“Vladimir Putin has
heard all these issue from Andrey Kotlyar,
the director of Ussuriiskii nature reserve,”
Dr Darman said. “Now we may hope,that the
problems which the WWF and nature reserve
failed to solve for many years will receive
state resolution at last.”
+ More
Long haul to measure
Arctic sea ice confirmed
03 Sep 2008 - WWF has
welcomed the news that a pioneering expedition
to deliver the most accurate measurements
yet of the arctic ocean ice sheet has secured
the funding it needs for the survey.
The survey team, led
by the experienced British polar expedition
leader Pen Hadow, will depart in mid-February
and plans to spend over 100 days hauling
ground-penetrating radar equipment over
the ice to the North Pole.
“This will allow climate
scientists to refine their predictions for
the climate of this region and the world,”
says Martin Sommerkorn, Senior Climate Change
Advisor for the WWF International Arctic
Programme.
“The ice thickness in
the Arctic has been the missing variable
in being able to more accurately predict
how quickly the arctic ice will melt away,”
he said.
The trend of diminishing
arctic ice due to climate change raises
fears for entire arctic ecosystems that
depend on the ice, from single-celled organisms,
all the way up to larger animals.
The polar bear was recently
listed as threatened by the US government,
based on projections for the disappearance
of the ice.
“The Arctic could be
entirely ice-free in the summer as early
as 2013, or as late as 2040,” said Sommerkorn.
“The more the ice disappears,
the more vulnerable life in the Arctic becomes.
What many people do not realise is that
there are also climate feedbacks from the
Arctic to the rest of the world.
“As arctic ice melts,
it makes the climate more unstable across
the whole world. We need to know the rate
at which the ice is likely to go, to help
us prepare, and to help us persuade governments
of the urgency of immediate and effective
action on limiting greenhouse gases.”
WWF is helping to support
the Catlin Arctic Survey, and looks forward
to receiving the data the expedition will
generate. It will help feed into preparations
for securing an effective global deal on
climate change in Copenhagen in 2009.
