The Tiger student team successfully wrapped up its fourth session in the Lazovsky Nature Reserve. Twenty-four students finished building an eco-trail on Petrov Island. The large-scale project began three years ago.

This year, students helped nature reserve workers to create and improve local eco-tourism infrastructure between 1 June and 14 July. Over a month and a half of intensive work, the students built 319 m of wooden walkways, 17 m of railed walkways and 92 m of staircases in the steep sections of the route. They also helped to fix up a pier and a metal platform on the stone section of the shoreline. 

“The team did a great job finishing the eco-trail on Petrov Island, for which we are very grateful. I want to praise the contribution of all four sessions as each of them did their share of the work for the common cause and successfully completed it. The fourth session brought the project to a close, in a very remarkable way,” said Sergei Aramilev, director general of the Amur Tiger Centre. He noted that next year another eco-trail with its own infrastructure will be built, this time on the mainland.

The students also participated in sport competitions, attended lectures by nature reserve workers and learned about Far Eastern wildlife. Some of the fourth session participants were even lucky enough to see an Amur tiger.

“We were spotting tiger paw prints by the ranger station all the time. We saw them at the beach of Petrov Bay and on the road towards the ranger station. Nature reserve workers would say that an adult female tiger and her cubs sometimes come to check up on our work, together or one at a time. My peers, especially those from other regions, were thrilled that tigers live so close and come to visit us. Some, including myself, were even lucky enough to see them. Yesterday, after the curfew, I went out to check if all the students were in their cabins and everything was okay. All of a sudden, I caught a glimpse of a striped body in the light of a lantern within 10 metres of the first cabin. I approached the bushes to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, and I clearly saw a silhouette of a tiger. I took out a hand flare but didn’t have to use it as the animal wandered off into the woods. The next morning we examined the spot and found fresh tiger tracks. We had the opportunity to learn how to measure and photograph them,” said team leader Alexei Krutikov.

The Tiger student team is a project of the Amur Tiger Centre that has worked in the Lazovsky Nature Reserve since 2016. Every year, conservation students build and improve eco-trails in the Lazovsky Nature Reserve and the Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve in close cooperation with employees of the protected areas.   

In 2019, the Tiger team welcomed its first international students. Participants of the fourth session included aspiring game managers, reforestation workers and veterinarians from the Primorye Territory State Academy of Agriculture and the Far Eastern State University of Agriculture, an ecologist and a geneticist from Tomsk State University, vets from Voronezh State Agricultural University and Northwestern State University of Agriculture (Tyumen), as well as environmental and veterinary science students from the Kyrgyz National Agrarian University and the University of Warsaw (Poland).