About 450 Siberian Tigers live in the Russian Far East, but the tiger conservation plan for Russia indicates that a population of about 700 tigers is feasible for the region. In this century, the Amur tiger, has survived four wars, two revolutions, and now an onslaught on its forests. Between 1910 and 1947, tigers were hunted as game or pests in Russia. According to some accounts, this depleted tiger numbers to as few as 50 individuals. In 1947 The Soviet Union banned tiger hunting allowing them some respite but poaching became a rampant problem during the economic and political chaos surrounding the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The Law of the Russian Federation on Environmental Protection and Management of 1992 reestablished legal protection for Amur tigers but in 1993, Russia’s Primoski Krai Ecology Committee estimated that 60 tigers were still being poached each year from a population of 200-300 tigers. Continued loss at this rate meant that Siberian tigers could have become extinct by the year 2000. In December 1993, an international cooperative effort lead by Russian authorities and several foreign NGO’s agreed to a detailed plan to save Amur tigers with two main objectives 1) to stabilize tiger populations by the year 2000 and 2) to secure sound tiger habitat to ensure that a stable Amur tiger population would last well into the next century.
