From March 16 through 19, Vladivostok hosted the international conference "The Amur Tiger in Northeast Asia: Conservation Problems in the 21st Century." Biologists from ten countries, government officials and members of international environmental organisations gathered to discuss the effectiveness of the national Amur tiger research programme and the issues related to implementing the strategy to protect the Amur tiger in the Far East.

Staffers with the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) presented the programme to research the Amur tiger in Russia's Far East (the Amur Tiger Programme, developed by the RAS) and presented the results achieved over the past year. The programme aims to develop a scientific platform for the conservation of the Amur tiger living in Russia's Far East.

The programme's objective is to study the distribution range of Amur tiger populations, the migration patterns and the number of these big cats in Russia and the way they use the landscape. Also, scientists are researching their reproductive biology, habitat, feeding patterns and food resources, the distribution and dynamics of the populations of the main prey species, and the tigers' relationships with rival predators.

Scientists at the conference explained the satellite-tracked GPS-Argos collars, used to research tiger migrations, and their use of phototraps to identify tigers.

At the end of the conference the scientific community approved and adopted a new draft version of the strategy to protect the Amur tiger in Russia, which was drawn up by the working group specially set up by the Russian National Resources Ministry.