The Conservation Assured Tiger Standards (CATS) partnership, a certification programme for tiger conservation areas, has conducted a large-scale survey to evaluate the effectiveness of protected area management. Its report states that Russia has been successfully fulfilling its commitments to protect the Amur tiger and that it now boasts the world’s second largest tiger population.

“International experts’ conclusions about the activity of Russian protected areas confirm that we and our partners have been correctly implementing our Amur tiger conservation strategy. The tiger conservation experience of other countries helps us avoid possible mistakes in the future. The southern part of the Russian Far East is developing fairly quickly, tourism has increased and the population is expected to grow. Southeast Asian countries have already gone through this, and their experience will definitely be useful to us in the future,” said Sergei Aramilev, general director of the Amur Tiger Centre and chair of CATS national committee in Russia.

In 2015, the Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve became the first protected area in Russia to earn a CATS certificate. This scheme is an important tool that helps improve management and share existing methods and approaches with other protected areas inhabited by tigers. Meanwhile, yet another protected area for rare wild cat conservation will soon appear in Russia. Pompeyevsky National Park will be located in the Jewish Autonomous Region in the basin of the Pompeyevka River, bordering China’s Taipinggou National Nature Reserve.

According to the Amur Tiger Centre, the Amur tiger population has increased by 15 percent to 540 animals over the past 10 years.