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'Putin's tiger' alive, well and a mother
Source: Agencies |
November 27, 2009, Friday
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A RARE Siberian tiger that Vladimir Putin fitted with a radio-tracking collar is alive and well, the Russian prime minister's spokesman said on Wednesday, easing concerns raised when an environmentalist said the tracking device had gone silent.
Putin drew worldwide publicity in 2008 when he shot the five-year-old female with a tranquilizer gun and helped place a transmitter around her neck. Visitors to his Website could follow the animal's prowlings through Russia's wild Far East. A video of the episode is on YouTube.
Dramatizing the plight of a species some conservationists fear may be approaching extinction, Vladimir Krever of the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday that the satellite tracking device has been silent since mid-September, which he said could be due to battery failure, a broken collar or poachers.
Hours later, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said the batteries on the collar had indeed been running down and wildlife scientists placed a new collar on the tiger a week or so ago. "She is alive and well," Peskov said.
He said the tiger had given birth to a cub - also fitted with a collar during the most recent encounter - but he did not know when the cub was born.
It was not clear whether the tigers had been spotted since the collars were changed. Peskov said the communications system was being adjusted to enable constant tracking, state-run news agencies ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti reported.
Tigers are rapidly disappearing from the far-eastern regions of Russian due to poaching and the loss of habitat, conservationists say. Their number may have declined by 40 per cent since 1997, the Wildlife Conservation Society said, although the World Wildlife Fund, disputed that the drop was so large.
Putin drew worldwide publicity in 2008 when he shot the five-year-old female with a tranquilizer gun and helped place a transmitter around her neck. Visitors to his Website could follow the animal's prowlings through Russia's wild Far East. A video of the episode is on YouTube.
Dramatizing the plight of a species some conservationists fear may be approaching extinction, Vladimir Krever of the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday that the satellite tracking device has been silent since mid-September, which he said could be due to battery failure, a broken collar or poachers.
Hours later, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said the batteries on the collar had indeed been running down and wildlife scientists placed a new collar on the tiger a week or so ago. "She is alive and well," Peskov said.
He said the tiger had given birth to a cub - also fitted with a collar during the most recent encounter - but he did not know when the cub was born.
It was not clear whether the tigers had been spotted since the collars were changed. Peskov said the communications system was being adjusted to enable constant tracking, state-run news agencies ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti reported.
Tigers are rapidly disappearing from the far-eastern regions of Russian due to poaching and the loss of habitat, conservationists say. Their number may have declined by 40 per cent since 1997, the Wildlife Conservation Society said, although the World Wildlife Fund, disputed that the drop was so large.
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