On winter's door, tigers come in from the cold

By Jamie Kemsey
WWF-International Tiger Team
When I awoke the sky was still an inky black, its wispy clouds wafting over the city like wet tissue, languid and permeable.   It is cold, akin to a dead middle February day rather than late November, but after arriving from year-round tropical Malaysia, any temperature less than steamy feels like middle February.  The stillness was palpable, but the air not stale.  Something lingered, and it felt like optimism.  Achievement and reverie.  Hope with stripes.
It is here, in the unlikely location of St. Petersburg, Russia, on winter’s door, that hope for the magnificent tiger rests all its laurels. After a year-long process, the International Tiger Forum – the first summit of its kind for a single species – has finally begun, bringing together high level representatives from the 13 countries where wild tigers still remain to stave off its winter and bring back its spring, so it can thrive again in an atmosphere of renewal and harmony.
Of course renewal for the tiger is not automatic: there will be haggling, disagreement and late contentious conversations that float into morning.  But it must happen here in St. Petersburg.  The tiger has few chances left, its numbers rapidly sliced from 100,000 just 100 years ago to perhaps less than 3,200 today.

An Amur Tiger in a rehabilitation center in the Russian Far East (c) Vladimir Filonov/WWF-Canon
How could it get so bad?  The reasons are varied and knotty.  We know this, but the Tiger Forum is not set up to lay blame.  Rather, it prowls forward: yes, we have failed in the past, but tiger countries and their partners, like WWF, had not united in solidarity before.  We had not found a powerful champion with worldwide influence, such as our host, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  And we had not put the mechanisms in place, such as the tiger countries’ recently completed plan, the Global Tiger Recovery Programme, that required us to tackle the tiger’s decline not project by project, or country by country, but by collective action in which we all lend both our knowledge and sweat.
As the light finally saturates the short St. Petersburg day and the Tiger Forum delegates trickle in, the clarity of our purpose alights in me as well, as I think back to a very recent tragedy.  Earlier in the week a tiger was found dead on a hunting estate here in Russian Far East, where the largest sub-species, the Amur tiger, is found.  Though a culprit has been detained, the investigation is still ongoing.
Regardless of the outcome, another majestic cat will pad through the forest no more, silenced in its prime. These stories come to us on an all too regular basis, from all 13 tiger countries.  Yet, despite their ubiquity, Russia is also a beacon for showing the tiger can be saved.  With the Amur tiger facing extinction just 30 year ago – less than 100 remained in the wild – rigorous protection and unyielding dedication, strong will and progressive, ethical ways, has brought it back from the cold.  Today at least 400 Amur tigers slip through the Far East’s thick pine forests and cold clear waters.

Tigers are coming back in Russia.   I had heard they were recently seen near the Kremlin’s colorful domes and in Moscow’s airport, making their way to the confluence that will likely decide their ultimate fate.  Their days, like late November St. Petersburg, are short, but they don’t have to be.   The work of WWF and the tiger range countries in the past 12 months has shown that there is a will and a way.  Now we just need action – to part those leaden clouds and step out of the black into the light of a new day for tigers.  Gather the hope and hard work, put aside our differences and do more than create a new tiger conservation ethos.  We must put that ethos on the ground, and make it walk, from the snowy hills and valleys of the Russian Far East to the steamy swamps of Indonesia to the golden grasslands of India – the whole of Asia’s rich diversity.  We must gather all the willing to join us and encourage the tiger countries to stand tall and take ownership of this unprecedented effort to save their most precious natural resource, the tiger.  For this is the tiger’s last stand, and now only the brave and their bold action will ensure it always awakes to a new day.
Keep in touch here for more writing throughout the International Tiger Forum week from the November 21 to November 25.