On 4 June, two Amur tigers left for the wilderness of the Jewish Autonomous Region after completing a rehabilitation programme in the Primorye Territory. On 5 June, when the country celebrates Ecologist’s Day, the tigers will be released at the Zhuravliny (Crane) game reserve. This will be a gift for all nature conservation experts and volunteers, as well as for the tigers themselves.

Today was a hard day at the Centre for the Rehabilitation and Reintroduction of Tigers and Other Rare Animals in the village of Alexeyevka. Experts had to catch the tigers inside their enclosures, measure and weigh them and load them inside transport cages for subsequent delivery. It was possible to immobilise the male tiger named Ustin by 10 am, but the rather cautious female tiger, Svetlaya (Bright), hid successfully until noon. Both tigers are healthy, with the male and female weighing 140 kg and 105 kg, respectively. They are ready to be released into the wild. Once little tigers doomed to die, they have received a new lease of life, and they will be able to roam free and unhindered in their new home.

The Centre for the Rehabilitation and Reintroduction of Tigers and Other Rare Animals has already prepared several tigers for subsequent release. In May 2013, a tigress named Zolushka (Cinderella) was successfully released at the Bastak reserve in the Jewish Autonomous Region. That same year, the largest number of Amur tigers was released into the wild. This was made possible by a programme to research the Amur tiger in Russia's Far East, an independent project of the permanent expedition of the Russian Academy of Sciences aiming to study endangered animals listed in the Russian Red Data Book. That expedition was established in 2008 at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The releases were also made possible by the consolidated efforts of the Tiger special inspection, the Phoenix Foundation, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the Wildlife Conservation Fund (WCS).