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A new national park in the Russ­ian Far East will pro­tect crit­i­cally endan­gered Amur (or Siber­ian) tigers and the world’s rarest big cat: the Amur (or Far East­ern) leop­ard. Land of the Leop­ard National Park safe­guards 1,011 square miles of leop­ard and tiger habitat.

Declared on April 9, the park com­bines three exist­ing pro­tected areas: Kedrovya Pad Reserve, Barsovy Fed­eral Wildlife Refuge, and Borisovkoe Plateau Regional Wildlife Refuge. In addi­tion, key pre­vi­ously unpro­tected lands have been added into the park along the Chi­nese bor­der and in the north­east por­tion of the leopard’s range.

Dale Miquelle,WCS Rus­sia Pro­gram Director »

“We com­mend the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment for their fore­sight in cre­at­ing this new pro­tected area, and we are opti­mistic that it will pro­vide a crit­i­cal refuge for some of the most endan­gered big cats on the planet.” The last 30 or so remain­ing Amur leop­ards roam a nar­row sliver of Russ­ian forests between the Sea of Japan to the east and China’s Jilin Province to the west. While tigers occur over a much broader region to the north, this South­west region of Pri­morskii Krai also retains a small, vital pop­u­la­tion of the big cats that reg­u­larly move across the bor­der into Hunchun Reserve China. Their sur­vival is there­fore key to the recov­ery of tigers in north­east China.

“This is tremen­dous news for big cat con­ser­va­tion,” said Peter Zahler, WCS Deputy Direc­tor for Asia. “The cre­ation of this park greatly increases the amount of land pro­tect­ing crit­i­cal pop­u­la­tions of two of the world’s big cats, and it will go a long way to secur­ing their future. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide what­ever sup­port is requested to help con­serve tigers and leop­ards in the region.” WCS has been pro­vid­ing assis­tance to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment to con­serve Amur tigers and leop­ards since 1993. WCS con­ser­va­tion­ists work in the pro­tected area and sur­round­ing regions to mon­i­tor pop­u­la­tions of tigers, leop­ards, and their prey, and to con­duct law enforce­ment train­ing and mon­i­tor­ing. They also run a fire pro­tec­tion pro­gram and radio teleme­try stud­ies, men­tor Russ­ian grad­u­ate stu­dents research­ing the big cats, and con­duct wildlife health studies.

The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.

(Source: WCS, 13.04.2012; WWF Rus­sia, 10.04.2012)