Rare tiger disappears, raising scientists' fears

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin holds the head of the tranquilized five-year-old Ussuri tiger in this 2008 file photo. The tiger, which had a radio transmitter around its neck, has disappeared, worrying conservationists.

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A RARE Siberian tiger fitted by Vladimir Putin with a radio-tracking collar has vanished, a Russian environmentalist said yesterday, dramatizing the plight of a species some conservationists fear may be approaching extinction.

Russia's prime minister drew worldwide publicity in 2008 when he shot the five-year-old female tiger with a tranquilizer gun and helped place a transmitter around her neck.

That allowed visitors to his Website to follow the animal's prowlings through Russia's wild Far East.

But the satellite tracking device has been silent since mid-September, which could be due to battery failure, a broken collar or poachers, Vladimir Krever of the World Wildlife Fund said yesterday.

Tigers are rapidly disappearing from the far-eastern regions of Russian due to poaching and the loss of habitat, conservationists say.

Their number may have declined by 40 per cent since 1997, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a report released on Tuesday while another major conservation group, the World Wildlife Fund, disputed the figure.

The New-York based Wildlife Conservation Society said only 56 tigers have been spotted in an area of 24,000 square kilometers - about one-sixth of their known habitat in Russia.

Based on that, the group estimates the total number remaining in the wild at 300.

A similar estimate in 2005 put the number left in Siberia at 500, a huge increase over the less than 30 that were thought to remain in the 1940s.

But the Wildlife Conservation Society said the latest count still shows the animals could face extinction.

The society recommends a greater effort to preserve the tiger's habitat, stronger legal protections and a crackdown on poachers who hunt the animals for hides and bones prized in medicine.

Krever, of the World Wildlife Fund, disputed the Wildlife Conservation Society report.

"It is absolutely incorrect," Krever told reporters. "There's possibly been a decrease in the last two years, but definitely not 40 percent."

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