VLADIVOSTOK, November 13 (RIA Novosti) – An injured Siberian tiger and cub approached a village in Russia’s Far East in a rare and potentially dangerous incident, a local official said Tuesday.
Residents in the village of Amgu in the Primorye Territory saw the injured feline and informed the local administration. The tigers, who belong to an endangered subspecies, had apparently emerged from the nearby taiga.
There have been no reports of the tigers attacking anyone, but a local official said that they should be caught in the interests of public safety.
A spokesman for the local administration told RIA Novosti that tigers are rare visitors to the village and the last such incident happened about two or three years ago.
“Then an adult tiger carried off several dogs, but it was later caught,” the representative said.
The Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, is the largest subspecies of tiger. Its population sharply decreased in the 19th century, and today its habitat is mainly Russia’s Far East regions of Khabarovsk and Primorye near the Chinese border. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the last full-scale census held in 1996 put the number of Amur tigers in the wild at between 415 and 476.
Last week, President Vladimir Putin signed a package of orders aimed at boosting the protection of endangered Amur tigers and leopards.
The Kremlin orders issued Thursday include the creation of a new national park, a ban on leasing forest areas inhabited by the animals, measures to reintroduce the big cats and the adaptation of a separate strategy to preserve the Amur leopard, another endangered Far East species.
