On the first Day of Neighbourliness established by Land of the Leopard, residents of the village of Filippovka in Primorye chose a name for the female tiger they had rescued a few months ago. The majority voted to name the six-month-old female tiger Filippa after their village.

“This event is an amazing instance of neighbourly cooperation between the national park and the locals. Philippa’s rescue is a story of how residents of the village and major organisations such as Land of the Leopard and the Amur Tiger Centre teamed up for the sake of our common goal – preserving the Red Data Book animal,” Zilya Ibatullina, deputy director for tourism and environmental education at Land of the Leopard, told reporters.

On the night of 29 December, a man found an Amur tiger cub near his house in Filippovka in the Khasan District of Primorye. He reported the find to Land of the Leopard National Park. The park’s employees took the cub to the Centre for the Rehabilitation and Reintroduction of Tigers and Other Rare Animals in the village of Alekseyevka in the Primorye Territory.

Filippa is getting along well. She is diligently honing her skills and seems to be no longer upset over the loss of her mother. If the rehabilitation process is a success, Filippa will be released back into the wild. But full rehabilitation will take around a year and a half, until she turns into an adult female tiger.