EN

Endangered

C2a(i);D

3.1

The Amur Tiger now occurs primarily in Russia, where it has made a spectacular comeback since the 1930s, when the population fell as low as 20–30 animals (Kaplanov 1948). The population is now estimated at 360 tigers (GTRP 2010), based on a comprehensive 2005 population census (Miquelle et al. 2007). This number, based on track surveys in the snow, probably includes around 100 sub-adults >20-<36 months of age (D. Miquelle pers. comm. 2007), so that the population of breeding adults is approximately 250. Russia’s previous rangewide survey had found a similar number ten years earlier, in 1996, leading to a conclusion that the population had stabilized due to intensive conservation efforts (Miquelle et al. 2007) and a revision of the Amur Tiger’s Red List category from Critically Endangered to Endangered in 2007. However, although these full range surveys provide fairly reliable information on tiger numbers, the logistical and financial levels of commitment make them infeasible to conduct on a regular basis. Population trends can be deduced from smaller-scale monitoring in smaller representative areas, focusing on parameters including tiger track density, local expert assessments of numbers, presence of females with young, prey abundance and other variables. Analyzing 13 years worth of data, the monitoring program has indicated a significant negative population decline, with a slightly steeper declining trend evident since 2004, despite a bounceback in tiger numbers in 2010 after a very cold and snowy winter in 2009 (Miquelle et al. 2010). Poaching of Tigers as well as their wild prey species is considered to be driving the decline (Schwirtz 2009). Moreover, a broad genetic sampling of 95 wild Russian tigers found markedly low genetic diversity, with the effective population size (Ne) extraordinarily low in comparison to the census population size (N), with the population behaving as if it were just 27–35 individuals (Henry et al. 2009). This reflects the recent population bottleneck of the 1940s, and concords with the low documented cub survivorship to independence in the Russian Far East (Kerley et al. 2003). Further exacerbating the problem is that more than 90% of the population occurs in the Sikhote Alin mountain region, and there is little genetic exchange (movement of Tigers) across the development corridor which separates this sub-population from the much smaller subpopulation found in southwest Primorye province (Henry et al. 2009).

In China, the small population is not independently viable and dependent on movement of animals across the border with Russia (Kang et al. 2010). The continued existence of P.t. altaica in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is uncertain.