MOSCOW, February 26 (RAPSI) – A hunter who killed a rare Siberian tiger that he tracked down in far-eastern Russia has been fined 720,000 rubles ($20,000) and sentenced to two years and five months in a “strict regime” penal colony, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The hunter shot the female tiger in a forest not far from the village of Dalny Kut in the Primorye Territory in May last year. He then skinned it and hid the body near a river.
Siberian tigers are on the verge of extinction. Russia’s parliament in last year made hunting endangered species a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison.
But the hunter, whose name has not been disclosed, was imprisoned not just because he killed the tiger, but because he committed an unrelated theft.
He was fined and sentenced to a year and a half of community service for killing the animal, but was given the prison sentence as a combined punishment for the two crimes.
