This article was published on June 13, 2014 - Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its leopards and tigers were hunted almost to extinction. Evgeny Lebedev joins a new bid to save them. On a clear spring night, Pavel Fomenko leads the convoy of trucks, their headlights off and their occupants silent, across the Siberian plain. Earlier that day he had spotted tiger prints in a nearby riverbed. Now he is on the hunt. Not for the striped cat. But for those who wish to kill it. Fomenko works for the World Wildlife Fund and, hand in hand with the Russian authorities, is in charge of combating the poachers who wish to earn tens of thousands of pounds through killing one of the world’s most dramatic — and endangered — species. Thousands of tigers and leopards once lived in Russia’s Far East, spreading deep into China and Korea. The exact numbers remaining are not known but it is feared there may be only 500 tigers left. The situation for the leopard is even worse. In the wild it is believed just some 45 remain. Read full article...
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 08:27:26 +0000
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