Can China Save the Amur Tiger?
By Richard Conniff When Dale Miquelle first went to work with Amur (or Siberian) tigers in the Russian Far East in 1992, wildlife experts expected that the subspecies would be extinct by the end of the 20th century. The population had dipped to as low as 30 individuals in the 1940s before rebounding as a result of strict Soviet wildlife management, to about 200 to 300 animals in the early 1990s. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, taking almost all environmental enforcement down with it. As the ruble and the Far East economy went into free-fall, the tiger’s prey species, including deer and wild boar, often wound up in the dinner pots of hungry locals. Commercial poachers targeted the tigers themselves, selling the carcasses for $5,000 or more to the traditional-medicine market just over the border in China. It was hardly an auspicious time to start the Siberian Tiger Project, a joint Russian-American effort now managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Or maybe it was the best p
