News Archive

(September 29, 2016)   -   The 17th annual Tiger Day Festival was held in Vladivostok on September 25. This year’s event continued the trend of ever increasing size and interest, with an approximately 15,000 participants and an estimated 50,000 attendees. The event kicked off with a huge parade that included 91 groups representing schools and both governmental and non-governmental agencies engaged in environmental protection. The parade ended in the main square downtown, where entertainment on the main stage was sup...

READ THE STORY

(September 27, 2016)   -     North of Ternei, in the province of Primorye where I conduct most of my research, there are no hotels and no restaurants. There are barely even people. There are only a half-dozen small settlements, logging towns or subsistence villages that are remote islands of humanity scattered broadly across a rolling sea of mountain and forest. When I travel to this wilderness it’s usually in a huge truck that doubles as a cabin, a hulking diesel we pack tightly with food and other supplies an...

READ THE STORY

(September 06, 2016)   -     I feel a kinship with Vladimir Arsenyev, the Russian topographer who explored Primorye a hundred years ago. We both know the secret places of these forests: the rivers where salmon spawn and the rocky outcroppings where tigers den. Arsenyev left an indelible mark not just on me, but on people across the province, with an entire city, a river, several museums, and multiple streets named after him today. Jonathan C. Slaght’s translation of Vladimir Arsenyev’s 1921 book Acro...

READ THE STORY

(August 21, 2016)   -     New photographs just released from Bastak Reserve in the Russian Far East confirm that a feline Cinderella story continues to unfold. Brought into captivity as a nearly starved, 3-month old cub, the tigress that became known as Zolushka (Russian for Cinderella) flourished in a rehabilitation center designed to prepare her for life back in the wild. Without a mother (probably lost to poachers) Zolushka learned how to kill natural wild prey presented to her in the rehabilitation center, whe...

READ THE STORY

(July 02, 2016)   -     The temperate rainforests of Primorye become dense and green in summer, a vastness lost on those within it. Visibility can drop to almost zero along shrub-crowded game trails, where dew-drenched grasses cling like needy toddlers and spider webs tangle in the unshaven faces of those pushing through. Animals, resting nearby in the daytime heat, crash away unseen, and a discordant symphony of birdsong pulses from the canopy. Everything is immediate and aromatic; a box packed tight with veget...

READ THE STORY

(May 27, 2016)   -     In autumn 2012, hunters found a young osprey wandering the forest of coastal Primorye. Whereas most of these fish-eating raptors had long flown south for the winter this one walked, dragging its broken wing behind it through the fallen leaves. The hunters chased the bird down, put it in a cardboard box, and brought it to Sergei, a colleague of mine they knew worked for a bird conservation NGO. By the time the raptor reached him, however, the broken wing had fused. The osprey would never f...

READ THE STORY

(May 05, 2016)   -     Why do tigers always seem to turn up when I’m looking for owls? My Russian colleagues and I spent about a month surveying for Blakiston’s fish owls in the Sikhote-Alin Reserve this winter, but mostly what we found was snow, cold, and tiger tracks. In fact, if we had been searching for tigers instead of fish owls, our expedition would have been a resounding success.   Read more here.  

READ THE STORY

(April 20, 2016)   -     One of my favorite Russian sayings, roughly translated, is that the better your off-road vehicle, the further you’ll have to walk to find a tractor to pull you free when you get stuck. I consider this phrase regularly during each Blakiston’s fish owl winter field season. We purposefully seek out the hard-to-reach places; the quiet corners of Primorye these secretive owls might be found. We cross narrow mountain passes, struggle through gauntlets of willow along overgrown fores...

READ THE STORY

(March 30, 2016)   -     National Geographic video channel recently announced a new documentary on Amur tiger conservation issues made by Emmanuel Rondeau. We decided to accompany this with a short introduction by Dale Miquelle director of WCS Russia about his acquaintance with Emmanuel. We offer you to watch this short video and also find excerpts from an interview of Emmanuel taken by Rachel Link from National Geographic. Read more here.  

READ THE STORY

(February 01, 2016)   -     A training seminar titled "Using camera traps for monitoring and research of wildlife populations" took place over January 25-30 2016 in the Sikhote-Alin Reserve and at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s research center in Ternei. The seminar was attended by over 30 participants from different Nature Reserves, National Parks and Scientific Institutes from all over the Russia. Its goal was to provide background information for those wildlife practitioners who recently star...

READ THE STORY