REVIEW: Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China by Jonathan C. Slaght
The thrilling saga of the great Amur tiger and the scientists who came together, across the world, to save it.
The forests of northeast Asia are home to a marvelous range of animals—fish owls and brown bears, musk deer and moose, wolves and raccoon dogs, leopards and tigers. But by the final years of the Cold War, only a few hundred tigers stepped quietly through the snow of the Amur River basin. Soon, the Soviet Union fell, bringing catastrophe; without the careful oversight of a central authority, poaching and logging took a fast, astonishing toll on an already vulnerable species.
Just as these changes arrived, scientists came together to found the Siberian Tiger Project. Led by Dale Miquelle, a moose researcher, and Zhenya Smirnov, a mouse biologist, the team captured and released more than 114 tigers over three decades. They witnessed mating rituals and fights, hunting and feeding, the ceding and taking of territory, the creation of families.
Within these pages, characters—both feline and human—come fully alive as we travel with them through the quiet and changing forests of Amur. We travel across time, too, as the fate of the species has been shaped by the history and politics of empires—such as the Qing dynasty’s Willow Palisade, which once slowed human settlement, or the later introduction of roads through Russian reserves. The Siberian Tiger Project became the longest-running tiger research initiative; its work continues to guide conservationists today. Jonathan C. Slaght’s Tigers Between Empires is the thrilling saga of the great Amur tiger and the scientists who came together, across the world, to save it.
CW – originally the way to try and catch the tigers for collaring included using a (large) box trap with a fenced off dog as bait. The tigers, however, were never interested and in some cases strolled right past a trap without stopping. The practice was quickly ended and darting was instituted.
Review
“The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China” part of the title is what caught my attention. Usually I see and read headlines and articles that detail how wildness is being lost in both land and animals. Precipitous declines in wildlife populations over the past decades make me wonder what will still be here in the coming years. So when I saw this book, I sat up and took notice.
Slaght, who has worked in some of the areas mentioned and with some of the people in the book, details what started a little over thirty years ago when Russian and US scientists began a collaboration in Eastern Russia just after the fall of the Soviet Union. Times were hard in the area but hearts were (mostly) willing. You just can’t make up the fact that specialists in mice and moose were the initial main “boots on the ground” along with long time researchers who had studied Amur tigers for decades.
New innovations – for the time – and techniques were introduced and tried as the team, along with the help of dedicated Russian forest rangers, sought to use snares (properly positioned, they won’t hurt the animal) to catch and collar tigers in order to learn whatever they could. In order to get the snares in the right place, the researchers had to learn to “think like a tiger.” Some tigers learned how to avoid the snares and one tigress taught all her cubs, none of whom were ever snared, the skill.
The trail wound through open lowland forest along the creek, with bracken ferns nearly a meter tall and grasses up to the men’s chests. Massive deciduous trunks, widely spaced, rose from this dark sea of vegetation. Igor cautioned with a whisper that they were approaching the trap site, but when the tigress erupted out of the grasses fewer than twenty meters away, he realized that he’d miscalculated: they were nearly on top of her. The tigress’s roar shook the earth and caused the hairs on Maurice’s neck and arms to stand on end.
The tigers were often “not pleased” and more than one team member recalled actually feeling the sound waves of Panthera tigris tigris rage roars before the tranquilizers finally kicked in. Extreme care was taken to minimize potential adverse effects to the animals while under sedation. Once collars were in place, Dale Miquelle would go up in an old (hey, it still flew) Soviet prop plane with antennas and radio equipment to track their locations.
Any one of these data points meant little on its own, but radiotelemetry allowed them to collect and map hundreds of observations. They used this groundbreaking information like forensic historians to recreate the tigers’ pasts and understand their motivations. They were learning to think like tigers.
Over the years, various others were added to the teams, each bringing diverse skills but all dedicated to building knowledge of the tigers, their prey, and the landscape to use to bring awareness of their plight and increase their protection. There were heartbreaking losses, such as when Lena, a mother tiger, is poached and Dale and Zhenya find only her slashed radio collar — and her four orphaned cubs. Despite the prevailing practice of leaving such orphaned tiger cubs, they made the decision to capture them. Two died from genetic issues but two – taken to a sanctuary in the US state of Nebraska given the lack of such facilities at the time in Russia – went on to make Lena not only a grandmother, not only a great-grandmother, but a great-great grandmother and increased the genetic diversity of Amur tigers in captivity. Yes, bittersweet but still a victory.
Any glimpse of a wild tiger is memorable; animated stories of even the briefest of such encounters have been told around kitchen tables in this part of the world for generations. But to behold one up close—to see the pink of the nose or feel its chest expand as it breathes—is life-changing. It is a moment in which the mythical becomes real.
The collaboration grew to include Chinese researchers trying to increase the Amur tiger population in northern China. Due to this research and growing local support, both countries have vastly increased the amount of protected land, outlawed logging, and introduced punishing sentences for anyone caught poaching or selling protected species. Censuses over the years show increasing tiger populations. Advances in raising orphaned cubs for eventual release into the wild have led to many being carefully raised, thoughtfully released, and the tigers – with one exception who was re-caught and remains in a captive breeding program – surviving, establishing ranges, mating and producing cubs of their own.
This dead deer was a reminder that wilderness reigned in this place; the wilds applied constant pressure. Civilization was a fragile thing—the tigers, the water, and the pines were the real masters here.
The book is well written by someone who knows the subject and contains lots of photos. There were some sections, such as the intricacies of setting up the 1995 census, that were less than thrilling. Unfortunately politics and egos have, at times, raised their heads during the project. The harsh conditions and, for some, being far from friends and families have led to personal and professional problems. But new generations of dedicated researchers who began their training with this project, locals feeling they have a stake in the issue, and the increased space and protections seem to be helping this threatened feline marvel come back from the edge. B
~Jayne
In 1996, National Geographic, filmed a special on Amur tigers in Russia that features many of the members of this team. Type this – National Geographic Special, Tigers of the Snow (1997) – into the Youtube search box. WARNING at the beginning is a scene of poaching. Advance to the six minute mark to be past that.
Dale had no way of knowing whether Viktor had seen an actual tiger and, if so, where the animal might be—fifteen meters away or fifty or a hundred—but he complied, hunching down in the snow on all fours, both men taut and still as though engaging in an impromptu yoga session in the forest. After some moments, Viktor partially raised his body to gaze forward. Dale followed suit. There, on the far side of a rise only thirty meters away, stood the tiger, watching them.
People can live their entire lives in tiger country and never see one; those who do, remember. These animals evoke awe, respect, fear—anything but apathy. Russian villagers, when recounting their own tiger experiences, tell stories full of color, motion, and smell. It’s as though the body understands the weight of the moment and absorbs as much sensory information as possible before the experience ends.
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What a great review, thank you. This book will make an excellent gift for a friend.
@LML: Fabulous, I hope they enjoy it. I’ve read in reviews about this book that the author’s other book “Owls of the Eastern Ice” is also excellent.