Amurian tiger protection under consideration in Vladivostok
VLADIVOSTOK. March 16. KAZINFORM. A National strategy for the conservation of Amurian tiger and regional Action Plans for its protection in the Primorsky (maritime) and Khabarovsk Territories will be the main subject of discussion at an international conference, which opened here on Tuesday. The theme of the conference is "The Amurian Tiger in Northeast Asia: Problems of Conservation in the 21st Century"; Kazinform refers to Itar-Tass.
The forum is being attended by ecologists and biologists, representatives of financial and public organizations from China, the Republic of Korea, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, the United States, Japan, India, Malaysia, and Russia.
Yuri Darman, director of the Amur branch of the World Wildlife Fund, has said the forum is one of their important steps on the way to an international summit on tiger conservation problems. The summit is to be held in Vladivostok in September this year.
"Before the Heads of Government of 'tiger' states get to the negotiating table, it is logical for scientists of those countries and leading international experts on the felines to discuss problems of how to preserve the global tiger population," Darman pointed out.
Russia is the only tiger-habitat country where the stock of the species considerably grew since the middle of last century and has been relatively stable in the past decade. Russian now affords the largest tiger population in a single habitat -- 450 species or 11 percent of the world's tiger stock; Kazinform cites Itar-Tass.