Primorye
Siberian Tiger
Destination upon request
Au cours de mes séjours en Primorye, j’ai été invité à suivre une brigade anti braconniers dans la Réserve de Lazovsky et j’ai également pu visiter le centre de réhabilitation d’Utyos. Ces deux lieux sont parmi les plus important pour la protection des Tigres de Sibérie et des espèces menacées de l’Extrême Orient russe.
Lazosky State Nature Reserve
The Lazovsky Nature Reserve is located in Far East Russia, in the Eastern part of the Asian continent, alongside the Japan Sea, 200km North East of Vladivostok (Primorye Region), in the South of the Sikhote-Alin Mountains.
The reserve perimeter is around 240km long, including 36km of coastline along the Japan Sea and its territory stretches over 121000ha. Its average elevation is 500-700m with some peaks reaching 1400m. The two small Islands of Petrov and Belzov are also part of the reserve.
Lazovsky is home to around 4000 plants species, 3000 insects, 354 birds and 60 mammals, including 5 species which appear in the Russian Red Book of endangered animals such as the Amur Tiger (Siberian Tiger) which are well represented in the reserve.
Lazovsky’s great biodiversity is due to its particular geographical position, on the border of Eurasia and The Pacific, with a climate dominated by a polar front in winter and monsoon influence in summer. Beyond that, the reserve’s location, at the Southern limit of the last glaciation, meant that at the end of this period, old species could survive here and coexist with new ones.
Because of all these interlacing factors, the local ecosystem (called the “Taiga of Oussouri” ecosystem, after the river located in the west of this Primorye Region) is very complex and is composed of sub-tropical flora and fauna as well as euro-Siberian ones. Among the sub-tropical species, we find Ginseng, the Amur Leopard, the Himalayan Bear, Sika Deer… and among euro-Siberian species, Aspel, Wolverine, Brown Bears…
Organisation and projects
The reserve’s current status was established in 1935. Before then, Lazovsky had been a more or less protected zone since 1928. The area was given the name “Lazovsky State Nature reserve” 1943, after the murder by poachers of Lew G. Kaplanov, a zoologist working in the reserve.
Not a single road passes through the reserve and nobody is allowed inside. The Reserve Administration Headquarters are based in the small town of Lazo and organized into three Departments: one for the Inspectors in charge of Fauna and Flora protection, one charged with Ecological Education for the local population (mainly focused on young people) and thirdly a Scientific Department.
The teams of Inspectors come under two categories corresponding to two different projects.
The first are teams of two people, generally based in the villages or in cabins (called check points) around the reserve and see that nobody enters. They stay in position for one month and generally are not local to ensure that they are not friends with local poachers.
The second category, brigades of five to seven men, can intervene at the request of their colleagues, or patrol throughout the reserve in three week stints, all year long. They patrol day and night, by foot or in a 4×4 truck in order to police poaching cases. There are three of these brigades with two on duty in the field at any time. They have radio equipment and guns.
These brigades completely replace the police on reserve territory. They have powers to arrest people, but Inspectors must show evidence of the crime, and real-time poaching is often difficult to prove.
Poaching cases often concern Ungulates or Tigers, but may also relate to the illegal picking of protected plants like Ginseng. Illegal logging is also condemned. Tigers disappear not only directly through poaching but indirectly because of logging: Tigers hunt Ungulates and Ungulates eat oak acorns: logging weakens Ungulate populations, and so threatens the Tiger population. Everything is linked.
Tigers are also killed for Chinese pharmacopoeia. Ginseng is picked for its supposedly aphrodisiac properties. Trees are cut down for firewood for sale to China. Ungulates are also hunted by local people food, as they are often too poor to buy meat. Nature here has to defend itself against many enemies…
Brigades often patrol the reserve boundaries on foot to find evidence of intrusion by poachers. One of the common poachers’ tricks is to break into the reserve on foot with dogs to track ungulates. Inspectors also patrol at night to catch poachers hunting ungulates by dazzling them with car headlights.
When you have the opportunity to join one of these patrols in a 4×4 vehicle or by foot going about their work, either by day or at night, you realize just how physical it is. Car travel seems endless, as it is often at the very limit of the all-terrain vehicle’s capabilities, particularly in March when the ice is no longer strong enough to cross, or when the snow turns to mud. Passengers are shaken about interminably. The hunt for poachers on foot in Taiga can last for hours, though deep snow and in cold weather often with no results.
Accommodation in either over-heated or icy cabins (depending on firewood availability and hour of the night) for five to seven men is rather “Spartan”, and getting up at 1am to go and catch poachers in the icy night (in March temperature is around –20°C) is quite a challenge. On top of that, once the team is in position and waiting for poachers, the engine can under no circumstances be started to warm-up the truck, so as not to risk being heard. Similarly, headlights have to stay off, so there is no chance of a better view of the road, adding to the difficulty of avoiding obstacles along the way…
Alongside the Inspection Department, the Scientific Department’s mission is to regularly survey the population size of each species living in the reserve (both fauna and flora), especially the most endangered such as Tigers, Gorals, Sika Deers, Ginseng, … and also to evaluate their dynamics. Scientists occasionally carry out a deeper study of one particular threatened species.
The third goal of the reserve is Ecological Education. To achieve this goal, the department has two remarkable tools at its disposal: the Natural History Museum and the Ecological Centre. The Museum has a magnificent and complete collection representing the species living in the reserve.
Through this collection, visitors are shown the importance Lazovsly’s biodiversity.
The Museum organizes visits to the reserve for tourists, as well as lectures for students and professors. The Ecological Centre has lot of books, VHS recordings and DVDs to watch or buy. It has an educational outreach programme aimed at the local adult population but also to children – this is why members of the centre offer courses in local schools with materials such as leaflets, posters, books, etc … to teach Ecology.
The educators’ role is also to explain to the adults living in local villages the importance of protecting tigers even if they have become closer and closer neighbours because of the humans’ constant territory expansion.
Difficulties and areas for improvement
By European standards, inspectors salaries would be very small, but even compared to average Russian salaries, they are not enough to support a family.
Most inspectors do not stay in the job for long and recruiting is the first difficulty encountered by reserve managers who have no power to increase salaries due to lack of resources. Inspectors also have targets to reach or face being fired.
The first aim of the reserve, ahead of the scientific and educational activities, is to protect Fauna and Flora from poachers. Therefore, Inspection equipment is a priority and the vehicles budget is a second difficulty.
Without gas or vehicle maintenance (of the old “Russian Jeeps”) such as regular tire replacements, patrolling would be impossible, but this represents a sizeable expenditure, especially considered alongside inspectors’ uniforms, weapons, radios and food.
The reserve is financed by the Russian Federation but also receives funds from well-known organizations like the WWF. An NGO based in Vladivostok, Phoenix Fund, helps the Preserve, providing complete funds for an entire brigade of Inspectors and their equipment. The reserve does now welcome occasional visitor groups, and so is beginning to make some “Ecotourism” revenue.
The reserve also encounters other difficulties, as the poachers financial means may be superior to the inspectors’. Some poachers particularly interested in tigers for the Chinese market own big, almost new, Japanese 4x4s. They also have night vision binoculars, efficient radio equipment and sometimes even satellite phones. On top of that, if they are arrested, they can afford good lawyers, and in such cases inspectors have great difficulty in prosecuting a poaching case.
The struggle seems so unfair.
Nevertheless, Alexander A. Laptev, Director of the reserve and Sergey A. Khokhrjakov, Deputy Director for Ecological Education and Ecological Tourism are proud that Lazovsky is one of the reserves with the best results in terms of the fight against poaching. Their colleagues from other reserves in Primorye and the rest of Russia come to Lazorvsky for training courses. Visitors with a passion for wildlife are welcome in small groups to see the good work being done here for themselves.
Utyos Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center
A Rehabilitation Centre is a place where wild animals receive care, but where they should not to stay for a long time unless it becomes obvious that they will never be able to survive again in the wild.
Utyos’ history is based on the linked destinies of one man and a tiger: Vladimir Kruglov and Luty.
Ten years ago, a tiger cub was found alone very close to the place where Utyos Centre would later be established. The cub’s mother had probably been killed by poachers and the tiger had been brought to Vladimir Kruglov, well known at this time as a hunter, having already captured more than 40 Tigers, all destined for the zoos or to the circuses of the Soviet Union.
This was the turning point for V. Kruglov. He decided to stop hunting, and to take care of this baby tiger he named Luty (meaning “fierce creature”!)
Unfortunately the tiger cub’s jaw had been injured in transit. Luty was cared for, and a team of veterinarians made him an artificial jaw. The surgery was a success, but it became obvious that Luty would never be able to live in the wild. So Luty became the first inhabitant of what was to become the Utyos Rehabilitation Centre.
Since that time, whenever an animal is found wounded in the wild or poachers are arrested and a poached animal is seized, it is taken to Utyos.
The centre is located in Khabarovsk Region, 1000km north of Vladivostok, on the slopes of Sikhote-Alin Mountains near Kutozovka village. Since 1996, Utyos has welcomed, cared for and released into the Taiga around forty-three Himalayan Bears (also called Collar Bears), three Amur Tigers (also called Siberian Tigers), five foxes, two deer, and two White Tailed Eagles. Tigers and bears are captured by poachers mainly for sale in China, the tigers for their bones and bears for their bile.
When a female Tigers is killed, if her cubs are lucky, they will be found before dying of starvation and can be sheltered in Utyos where they will be fed and looked after. Then two or three years later, if they are able to hunt by themselves, they will be released in the Taiga. If not, they will be donated to a zoo or a circus.
For bear cubs the principle is the same, but time to recovery of freedom is shorter. This winter (2006), there are eight bear cubs in the centre. They arrived a few months ago and will be released next May when fresh vegetation, bursting with vitamins, will have grown in the forest and when they will be able to feed themselves alone. Unlike their cousins the brown Bear, Himalayan Bears do not fish salmon in rivers or lakes, only occasionally taking an already dead one. For the most part, Himalayan Bears eat roots, herbs and berries.
The centre is also sheltering a fox and two lynx, one of them missing the end of its leg, possibly due to a trap, and the other missing an ear, maybe lost in a fight. Besides these, because of a very long, cold and snowy winter this year, a new species of resident appeared: young wild boars found alone, and visibly unable to find food by themselves because of the build-up of snow in the Taiga and unusually long winter.
The Utyos Centre receives no help either from the Khabarovsk regional government of or from Moscow federal government. Worse than that, local government takes taxes calculated on the sheltered animals’ faeces!
As the centre relies on its own revenue, a few years ago it opened its doors to ’ecotourists’. They provide rooms to spend one or more nights, and a good restaurant! At night, visitors can even hear the sounds of tigers visiting Luty near his enclosure!
Finally, certain projects at the Utyos Centre are sponsored by such organizations including the WWF, the WCS and a local NGO based in Vladivostok, the “Phoenix Fund”.
These revenues are, however, only just sufficient to keep the Centre alive. Vladimir Kruglov’s children, Edouard V. Kroglov and his sister, who continue their father’s work, would like to improve everyday conditions for the animals with larger and better adapted enclosures.
For instance, for Himalayan Bears, it would be better not to be isolated when they arrive at the centre, but to be housed all together in a large enclosure until they reach four years old. Later they would be separated into pairs in the smaller enclosures they unfortunately occupy now, from the moment they arrive.
It is very important for bear cubs to have large enclosures, which are high enough (three meters minimum) in order to facilitate their growth and to keep them in good physical condition.
It would also be better for the bear cubs to have an electrified enclosure so that they learn not to wander into local bee farms and steal honey!
As for the tigers, a larger fence allowing them to learn to hunt deer would be a real improvement.
But all these projects are expensive: depending on the enclosure, prices range from thirty- to seventy-thousand US Dollars for a surface area of 50ha. On top of this, Edouard V. Kruglov has to come up with funds for daily centre expenses such as employees’ salaries or animal food. A tiger like Luty needs 12kg of meat everyday and young bears cubs grow bigger every day…
Edouard V. Kruglov relies heavily on “ecotourism” to achieve his goals here, and allow the Utyos Rehabilitation Centre to carry on his father’s good work.