At the end of February, the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, along with the Tiger Special Inspection Federal State Institution under the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources, initiated and held the second stage of the census of the Amur tiger population in special areas within the tigers' habitat as part of a scientific research project.

According to Viktor Gaponov, Director of the Vladivostoksky branch of the Tiger Special Inspection Federal State Institution, 246 routes with a total length of 3,057 kilometres, have been introduced in 16 special areas in the Primorye and Khabarovsk Territories. Specialists will need to survey these routes twice during the winter season, from December to January and from January to February. They will have to consider not only tiger's tracks, but also tracks left by hoofed mammals, which are the tiger's main food source.

Gaponov said that they were currently processing the preliminary results from the first and second stages of the research. It is too early to draw any conclusions, but the data from the previous years has indicated a decrease in the number of tiger's and hoofed mammals' tracks in some areas.

This is the fifteenth census of the Amur tiger population in the Far East. A similar project was carried out earlier by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) as part of the programme on monitoring the Amur tiger population, which was worked out by the WCS using foreign investment funds. The project is currently being implemented in accordance with the Amur Tiger Project, approved by the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the Russian Geographical Society.

This is the first time that the Directorate for Protection, Control and Regulation of the Use of Wildlife Objects in the Primorye Territory has held a sample state census of the Amur tiger population. The legislation stipulates that the region's Department for Hunting Supervision must carry out the project using funds from the federal budget only in the Primorye Territory and outside the specially protected natural areas of federal importance, such as reserves, national parks and wildlife areas. In 2010 the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources demanded that all organisations involved in the Amur tiger study (census, special purpose monitoring, tracking with the use of special equipment) submit the data to the Tiger Special Inspection for further analysis.