SERAIT - CE POSSIBLE ALORS ?

Dans le communiqué suivant publié le 11 mai dernier, le WWF Russie montre son action auprès du WWF Chine pour la restauration de populations de tigres et de léopards dans le Nord Est de ce pays.

China tries restoring Amur tiger number using Russian experience

WWF-Russia and WWF-China have organized and conducted practical seminar on how to save Amur tiger and protect its habitat for inspectors of Chinese forest farms located in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces.

Five days long seminar was attended by staff of Wangqing, Chaoyanggou, and Nuanquanhe forest farms. Trainings and lectures were conducted outdoor, right in the field and given by specialists who are being involved in tiger conservation for years. In Orlinoye hunting estate the Chinese specialists were introduced to the methods for wild ungulates raising developed by WWF-Russia’s experts and evidence how these methods are put into practice. They joined game-wardens of the Primorskii Province Hunting Department is an anti-poaching raid and got acquainted with existing problems in tiger conservation, and their solution.

In Kedrovaya Pad Nature Reserve and Leopardovyi Refuge located in near-border districts of Primorye they got to know how protected areas function in Russia. Advanced methods of ungulates and large predators density survey were a special topic of the agenda.

“It is good that this time the seminar was attended by people directly involved in forest and animal protection against poachers in China, – notes Sergei Aramilev, biodiversity conservation program coordinator at WWF-Russia’s Amur branch. – They found that the forest in the near-border Chinese provinces is very similar to that one in Russia but with one exception: our forest is “alive” in all senses. Everywhere one can sense presence of animals; there are lots of tracks and other evidences of life. It was very important for us to deliver to Chinese colleagues a message that it is necessary and, what is most important, possible to restore wild ungulates, Amur tiger and Amur leopard in China”.

This is not the first and single seminar conducted for Chinese nature conservation bodies. Transboundary cooperation between China and Russia in nature conservation is being underway for several years; and in the fall 2009 in Vladivostok a cooperative agreement on conservation of the Amur tiger and Amur leopard and their habitat was signed. One of the main goals is establishing two transboundary protected areas.

“From my perspective, hunting estates determine the future of Amur tiger in Russia as the major part of tiger population live in this country. Activities of Russian hunting estates are very similar to resource management activities of Chinese forest farms. We do not have game industry in China and a bulk territory that could be inhabited by tigers is supervised by forest farms, - comments Dr. Jiang Guangshun, senior Amur program officer of WWF-China. - If we manage to effectively use conservation experience and expertise of our Russian colleagues to recover and manage ungulate in forest farms then we will probably succeed in restoration of tiger and leopard in China”.