This work will be carried out at eight sites by the Department for Protection, Control and Regulation of Wildlife in the Primorye Territory with the support of the Amur Tiger Centre for Conservation and Studies of the Amur Tiger.

Population monitoring will take place in two stages, which will involve the department's employees, invited experts and hunters.

As the department's spokesmen reported, the effort is aimed at determining the size and other parameters of the Amur tiger population in the monitored territories.

"This winter is the last chance to improve interagency cooperation before conducting monitoring next winter," said Department Director Vladimir Vasilyev. "Our task is to do quality work and to determine the trend in population change; the results of recent years show that it is relatively stable. "During the monitoring, there are plans to determine any changes in the Amur tiger's diet and habitat. These activities are carried out as part of the annual work that was initiated by public environmental and scientific organisations in 1997. At that time, the status of the Amur tiger population was recorded at 16 sites, which covered 15-18% of their natural habitat.

The department is responsible for the area including territories in the Pozharski, Dalnerechenski, Chuguyevski, Olginski, Terneiski, Ussuriyski and Lazovski districts. One of the sites covers a part of the Land of the Leopard National Park and hunting grounds.

Monitoring will also be carried out in the Sihote-Alinsky, Lazovsky and Ussuri nature reserves and on four sites in the Khabarovsk Territory. The territories will be examined twice – in December-January and February.

The Director of the Primorye branch of the Amur Tiger Centre believes that recording footprints in the snow is still the easiest, least expensive and fastest method of obtaining the information about the Amur tiger population that is necessary for taking decisions on its conservation.

"The main task of this year is to sum up the monitoring efforts carried out over the years and develop ways to optimise Amur tiger monitoring jointly with scientific and environmental societies," he said. "We should reduce the cost of these activities and improve their efficiency and territorial coverage."

A significant amount of work is conducted in the Primorye Territory on rare species conservation. One of the measures aimed at conserving the population of the Amur tiger and the Far Eastern leopard was the decision of Primorye Territory Governor Vladimir Miklushevsky on the creation of protected natural territories.

The Primorye Territory Governor said: "We have established special protected territories around the Land of the Leopard Park. This is a fairly large territory, which is necessary for the leopards to live comfortably. It was also decided to establish a national park on the Bikin River, or as it is also called, the Russian Amazon."