Just a follow up on the latest painting I'm working on now, it's an Oil and Acrylic on canvas painting of a Siberian Tiger, "Panthera tigris altaica" is it's scientific classification. It seems to be resting its head on a snow covered tree that is parallel to the ground, the environment that surounds him is somewhere in the woods. Who knows maybe he just had a nice meal and now he or she needs a rest. Please have a look at the conservation status and history below as it is the magnificent animals are being hunted to the point of extinction causing their species to be endangered, it is a shame yes but we can do something to minimize their fate. I just wish I could do something to help because I Love these BIG Cats! So that is why I'm painting this, a kind'a way to show my love for them.
It's Characteristics
The Siberian tiger (
Panthera tigrisaltaica),
also known as the
Amur tiger,
is a
tiger subspecies inhabiting mainly the
Sikhote Alin mountain
region with a small subpopulation in
southwest Primorye province in
the Russian Far East. In 2005, there were 331–393 adult-subadult
Amur tigers in this region, with a breeding adult population of about 250 individuals. The population has been stable for more than a decade due to intensive
conservation efforts, but partial surveys conducted after 2005 indicate that the Russian tiger population is declining.
The Siberian tiger is the largest living
felid and ranks among the
biggest felids that ever existed.
The Siberian tiger is reddish-
rusty or rusty-yellow in colour, with narrow
black transverse stripes. The body length is not less than 150 cm (60 in), condylobasal
length of skull 250 mm (10 in),
zygomatic width 180 mm (7 in), and length of
upper carnassial tooth over 26 mm (1 in) long. It has an extended supple body
standing on rather short legs with a fairly long tail. It is typically 5–10 cm (2–4 in)
taller than the
Bengal tiger, which is about 107–110 cm (42–43 in) tall.
Threats
A broad genetic sampling of 95 wild Russian tigers found markedly lowgenetic diversity, with the effective population size extraordinarily low in comparison to the census population size, with the population behaving as if it were just 27–35 individuals. Further exacerbating the problem is that more than 90% of the population occurs in the Sikhote Alin mountain region, and there is little movement of tigers across the development corridor, which separates this sub-population from the much smaller sub-population found in southwest Primorye province.
The winter of 2006–2007 was marked by heavy
poaching. Poaching of tigers and their wild prey species is considered to be driving the decline, although heavy snows in the winter of 2009 could have biased the data.
Threats in the past
In the early years of the
Russian Civil War, both
Red and
White armies based in
Vladivostok nearly wiped out the local Siberian tigers. In 1935, when the Manchurian Chinese were driven back across the Amur and the Ussuri, the tigers had already withdrawn from their northern and western range. The few that remained in the East Manchurian mountains were cut off from the main population by the building of railroads. Within a few years, the last viable Siberian tiger population in Russia was confined to
Ussuriland. Legal tiger hunting within the Soviet Union would continue until 1947 when it was officially prohibited. In the mid 1980s, it was estimated that the Siberian tiger population consisted of approximately 250 animals. In 1987, law and order almost entirely broke down due to the impending
dissolution of the Soviet Union. Subsequent illegal deforestation and bribery of park rangers made the poaching of Siberian tigers easier, once again putting the subspecies at risk from extinction.
Conservation
Tigers are included on
CITES Appendix I, banning international trade. All tiger
range states and countries with consumer markets have banned domestic trade as well. At the 14th Conference of the Parties to
CITES in 2007, stronger enforcement measures were called for, as well as an end to tiger farming.
In 1992, the
Siberian Tiger Project was founded, with the aim of providing a comprehensive picture of the ecology of the Amur tiger and the role of tigers in the Russian Far East through scientific studies. By capturing and outfitting tigers with
radio collars, their social structure, land use patterns, food habits, reproduction, mortality patterns and their relation with other inhabitants of the ecosystem, including humans is studied. These data compilations will hopefully contribute toward minimizing
poaching threats due to traditional hunting. The
Siberian Tiger Project has been productive in increasing local capacity to address human-tiger conflict with a
Tiger Response Team, part of the Russian government’s
Inspection Tiger, which responds to all tiger-human conflicts; by continuing to enhance the large database on tiger ecology and conservation with the goal of creating a comprehensive Siberian tiger conservation plan; and training the next generation of Russian conservation biologists.
In August 2010, China and Russia agreed to enhance conservation and cooperation in protected areas in a transboundary area for Amur tigers. China has undertaken a series of public awareness campaigns including celebration of the first Global Tiger Day in July 2010, and International Forum on Tiger Conservation and Tiger Culture and China 2010 Hunchun Amur Tiger Culture Festival in August 2010.
In December 2010, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS Russia) and Phoenix Fund initiated a project in co-operation with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) to improve the protection of tigers and prey species in four key-protected areas, namely Lavovsky Nature Reserve, Sikhote Alin Nature Reserve, Zov Tigra National Park and Kedrovaya Pad - Leopardovii Protected Area. The project consists of the following components: 1) monitoring patrol routes and law enforcement results with the patrol monitoring system MIST which is based on GIS-technique, 2) support for patrol teams (fuel, spare parts, maintenance for vehicles and ranger outfits) and 3) bonuses for patrol teams that perform well. The first project results indicate a success. Patrol efforts (measured by total time spent on patrols and distance of foot patrols) in the two protected areas where the project started first (Kedrovaya Pad - Leopardovii and Lazovsky protected areas) have increased substantially. This was established by comparing the patrol data of the 1st quarter of 2011 with the 1st quarter of 2012. Patrol law enforcement results (confiscated fire arms, citations for poaching and other violations as well as fines) have also increased markedly (this was established by comparing the results of the two protected areas in 2011 to previous years).
Re-population ideas
In 2010, Russia exchanged two captive Amur tigers for
Persian Leopards with the
Iran government, as conservation groups of both countries have agreed on restocking these animals back into the wild within the next 5 years. Some experts, however, doubt the plan as they feel that this is a political publicity exercise. On December 30, 2010, one of the tigers exchanged died in Eram Zoo in
Tehran.
Inspired by recent findings that the Amur tiger is the closest relative of the Caspian tiger, discussions started if the Amur tiger could be an appropriate subspecies for reintroduction into a safe place in Central Asia. The
Amu-Darya Delta was suggested as a potential site for such a project. A feasibility study was initiated to investigate if the area is suitable and if such an initiative would receive support from relevant decision makers. A viable tiger population of about 100 animals would require at least 5,000 ha (19 sq mi) of large tracts of contiguous habitat with rich prey
populations. Such habitat is not available at this stage and can not be
provided in the short term. The proposed region is therefore unsuitable
for the reintroduction, at least at this stage of developments.
I hope you enjoyed this post and please feel free to comment if you know of ways to help them maintain their existence on this planet. Thank You
