Tigers Between Empires: The Journey to Save the Siberian Tiger from Extinction, Jonathan C. Slaght, Allen Lane, \u00a330<\/p>\n
How things have changed since the world\u2019s first tiger summit, held in St Petersburg in 2010. Called for by the Russian president Vladimir Putin and World Bank chief Robert Zoellick, also in attendance was prime minister of Nepal Madhav Kumar and prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina. In June this year, authorities in Nepal charged Kumar with corruption, and two months later thousands gathered in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to mark the first anniversary of mass protests that toppled longtime leader Hasina. It hardly needs to be said that Putin\u2019s own standing, at least in the West, has soured immeasurably.<\/p>\n
The goal of that summit was to double the number of wild tigers by 2022. In 1900, there were thought to be 100,000 tigers in the world, then they disappeared from Vietnam in 2002, Cambodia in 2007 and Laos in 2013. Today, tigers exist in just seven per cent of the lands they did a century ago.<\/p>\n
When it comes to saving them, geopolitics and conservation cannot be separated. That is probably why American wildlife biologist Jonathan C. Slaght chose Tigers Between Empires<\/a> as the title for his new book, which charts the conservation story of the majestic Amur tiger.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t Slaght\u2019s first work. He also wrote Owls of the Eastern Ice<\/a>, based on a years-long quest to track down the highly elusive Blakiston\u2019s fish owl in Russia\u2019s Far East, specifically in Primorye, a remote forested region. It became a surprise bestseller. Tigers Between Empires, takes us back to that territory and to the plight of the Amur tiger (\u2018paradoxes of grace and violence\u2019) and deep into the complex frontlines of conservation. It is a history of the people who have tried to manage and preserve tiger numbers despite the political polarities of both the home nations of the conservationists, Russia and America, and the lands that the Amur tiger has historically roamed. Before the 1850s, several thousand Amur tigers tracked their prey and bred through vast stretches of northeast Asia, specifically around the basin of the River Amur <\/a>where Russia, China, and Mongolia meet.<\/p>\n The signing of two particular treaties by Russia and China, in quick succession, brought catastrophe: the Treaty of Aigun in 1858, and the Convention of Peking in 1860. As Slaght writes: \u2018These agreements were unequal \u2013 Russia gained everything and China nothing \u2013 and wedged a political border in the centre of the Amur tiger\u2019s range.\u2019<\/p>\n Afterwards, both the Chinese and Russian empires encouraged people to settle these lands with \u2018the Russians eager to consolidate gains on their side and the Chinese keen to stave off further territorial gains on theirs\u2019. Those arriving to the Russian territories hunted tigers, and as immigration rose, tiger numbers dropped. Within four decades the tiger population was at just 30 or so, with the big cats retreating deep into the Sikhote-Alin mountains of the Russian Far East, way out of reach to most hunters. The best place for a tiger is where there is plenty to eat (\u2018their favourite food, wild boar, prey that can weigh as much as a grand piano and can have tusks like sharpened knives\u2019), and where they will never come into contact with humans.<\/p>\n During times of political upheaval, danger presents itself not just for humans but for wildlife, too. Primorye saw turmoil during the 1917 Russian Revolution<\/a> and the subsequent civil war<\/a>. \u2018Back then, unscrupulous entrepreneurs had taken advantage of the political uncertainty to cut down the forests around Terney [by the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve] as quickly as they could. They logged vast tracts of enormous and valuable Korean pine, a species that grows forty-five meters tall, lives up to seven hundred years, and is prized as a source of lumber for everything from bridges to furniture. It is also a species essential to the survival of the eco-system: without Korean pine there would be no Amur tigers. The pine nuts from this tree feed badgers, bears, deer, and wild boar. In turn, these species feed tigers\u2026\u2019 Tigers have found themselves under threat time and again by human-drawn borders, and the destruction of their habitats. As Slaght puts it, they\u2019ve been \u2018caught in this strange space between two empires \u2013 skirting the human-drawn line superimposed over forest and mountain\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n Throughout the book, the detail on tigers when they are living their lives, tracking prey and feasting is vivid and captivating, \u2018Each meal is a hard-won prize\u2026 only one of every three hunting attempts was successful, and tigers secured kills only once every four or five days\u2026 Tigers usually attack from the side or behind, swatting at an ungulate\u2019s hindquarters to slow it down. Then they work their way along the body, using their claws like a climber\u2019s ice ax for traction, to reach then grip the animal\u2019s throat with their jaws.\u2019<\/p>\n When the Soviet Union officially prohibited tiger hunting in 1947, their numbers started to slowly recover and, by the late 1980s, thawing political tensions had \u2018cracked a door of opportunity for Amur tiger research in Russia\u2019. Via the Siberian Tiger Project, Russian scientists and American conservationists joined forces to try and save the tigers. Slaght introduces us to the leaders of the Russian side of the collaboration \u2014 Dima Pikunov, Igor Nikolayev, and Zhenya Smirnov \u2014 the sort of men who would spend months in the forests living with tigers to learn about them. And a whole cast of tigers themselves, such as Lidiya, who raised three litters and was tracked by the Siberian Tiger Project from 1999 to 2006, after which she disappeared at the age of 12, a long life for a tigress in the wild.<\/p>\n When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the chaos that was unleashed on the economy meant tigers were being killed again, not least because the then Soviet-Chinese border opened and customs officials were being bribed. As Slaght points out, it was almost impossible to punish the hunters: \u2018between 1991 and 2009, a period when hundreds of tigers had been poached in Russia and numerous people had been arrested for the offence, only a single person was found guilty of killing one\u2019.<\/p>\n