Traces of a male Amur tiger were found near the village Sofiysk in the Ulchsky district of the Khabarovsk Krai is the northernmost point of the predator’s appearance this year, documented. And in the Khasan district of Primorsky Krai near the village. Swan marked traces of females, which is one of the most southerly points of distribution of the tiger in Russia. Despite the proximity to the settlements, while conflict situations are not fixed. Specialists of hunting supervision services monitor the situation.
On November 30, 2015, local residents, 6 km from the village of Sofiysk, found traces of a striped predator. In the course of checking information, the specialists established that the traces belong to the male Amur tiger.
According to their conclusion, the tiger came from the left bank of the Amur from the Pochtovaya bayou, then crossed the Gornaya bayou, climbed the Kamenka key to the dirt road, visited an element dump, then went to the village, but walked around it. At the same time, dogs that were not brought were not interested in him.
“The traces found do not belong to the tiger Stubborn. This is one of those tigers, which are often called “wanderers,” since it is not clear where they come from and where they are going, and at the same time, they appear in places where the tiger is not suitable for habitation. Unfortunately, such wandering tigers have a rather “heavy share”, as there is a shortage of food resources in the places where they appear, and the local population is not always ready for the appearance of a tiger, because before that they had not even heard of it, so tigers can become a victim of a poacher bullet or loop. It is worth paying attention to the fact that this tiger behaves adequately so far, and I hope that it will not be the last wanderer of its kind,” commented Sergey Aramilev, director of the Amur Tiger Center Primorsky branch.
A similar case, when a tiger approached a settlement, but did not attack domestic dogs, occurred about a week ago in the Khasan district of the Primorsky Krai. The owner of one of the recreation centers reported that he had seen an Amur tiger and its tracks near the village of Lebedinoye.
To verify the information, the conflict resolution team of the Department of Hunting Supervision of the Primorsky Krai and an employee of the Amur Tiger Center left for the spot. Indeed, fresh traces of a female Amur tiger were found at the entrance to the village of Lebedinoye in the place where she came out of the forest on the track.
Following some distance along the road, the predator turned into the forest several times and reappeared on the road, then finally turned into the forest and headed towards the Russian-Chinese border.
In total on the trail of a tiger was covered 10 kilometers. It was decided to stop further tracking due to security reasons, since the experts practically “caught up” with the tiger. According to a survey of local residents, they did not notice the loss of dogs or other domestic animals, and they did not even guess about the close presence of the tiger.
“In relation to this tiger there is no need to take any measures, as it does not pose a threat to the population. Routes of tigers often pass near settlements, which is the norm, and such cases cannot be considered a conflict situation. Another thing is when a predator comes to the limits of settlements or attacks domestic animals. This animal is afraid to overcome too open places, that is, the tiger behaves as befits - be careful,” concluded Andrei Orel, an inspector at the Department of Hunting Surveillance in the Primorye Krai, during a territory survey.
The size of the tiger footprint coincided with the size of the imprint found on November 21 of this year when investigating a conflict between a tiger and a man. However, there is no absolute guarantee that these are traces of that very tiger. During tracking, it was noted that the step length and the trajectory of the tiger's movement correspond to the physiological norm of a healthy animal. And if this is the same tiger, then it means that the injuries he received were light and now have no effect on his livelihoods.
Interestingly, the distance between the two points of detection of traces of the male and female Amur tiger, located in the north and south, is a straight 1212 km.
In both cases, experts continue to track incoming information on the location of tigers.