Five tiger cubs, two females and three males, found eighteen months ago starving in the Ussuri taiga, are nearing the end of their rehabilitation in Primorye. They are expected to be released in the wild in three months after learning how to hunt.

The return of five tigers to the wild is a major event. It costs at least 1.5 million roubles a year to prepare an animal removed from its habitat to return to the taiga. It also requires daily efforts by zoologists, ecologists and veterinarians.

Over the course of many months, the Amur tiger cubs, named Borya, Kuzya, Ustin, Svetlaya and Ilona, have been cared for at the Centre for Rehabilitation and Reintroduction of Tigers established by the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution and the Tiger Special Inspectorate. The animals were introduced to fellow taiga inhabitants, and taught to track and kill prey. The training course is almost complete and the cubs are ready to take their ‘final exam.

The rehabilitation programme has been developed as part of the Programme for the Study and Preservation of Amur Tigers in Russia’s Far East, carried out by the Permanent Expedition of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which studies endangered and particularly important species of Russian fauna.

According to Vitaly Timchenko, Director of the Tiger Special Inspectorate, the two-year-old cubs – the age when they are supposed to leave their mother – will be released in around three months. The researchers are now looking for suitable areas inhabited by a sufficient number of ungulates.

The young tigers are honing their hunting skills in special open cages that are big enough for the animals to learn to track prey.

The rehabilitation and reintroduction centre was opened over two years ago near the village of Alekseyevka in the Nadezhdinsky District of the Primorye Territory. One of the centre’s ‘patients’, the female tiger Zolushka (Cinderella), who successfully completed the training, has already been returned to the wild and now lives in the Bastak nature reserve in the Jewish Autonomous Region.