Bikin National Park has summed up the Amur tiger camera trap monitoring results: camera traps registered 26 rare striped cats! The monitoring in Bikin National Park is carried out with the support of WWF Russia and the Amur Tiger Center.

Bikin National Park has finished the collection and the analysis of the data received by camera traps set in the period of November 2017 – February 2018. The monitoring work was carried out by the staff of science department and by local hunters, working in the national park, on the area of 2000 square kilometers. WWF Russia Amur branch purchased and handed over to the park 50 camera traps in January 2017. And 30 camera traps were provided by the Amur Tiger Center for protection and monitoring.

Download

A tiger resting right in front of the camera trap

Bikin National Park / WWF Russia / Amur Tiger Center

“Thanks to the support of our partners – WWF Russia and the Amur Tiger Center, the preparation for camera trap monitoring has been launched since the first days of the Park’s functioning. The first camera traps were set up in the beginning of 2017, that time we registered 10 tigers – 5 females and 5 males, however the large scale photo monitoring was conducted for the first time in winter 2017-2018, - comments Alexei Kudryavtsev, the head of Bikin National Park. – Photo monitoring was carried out by local hunters out of the Park’s staff on their family lands, and became one of the directions on attraction of local people to the work of the national park. Thanks to the hunting skills and well mounted camera traps almost all tigers living on the territory of 2000 square kilometers were registered. We are happy to receive this information. The results allow to estimate the tiger numbers on the Park’s territory and take necessary protection measures.”

Download

Mounting camera traps in the Park

Anna Barma / WWF Russia

«We received a massive portion of the material, examined and processed it manually. Indeed, the analysis of the images is very time consuming, - comments Vladimir Popov, senior staff of science department of the Bikin National Park. – Finally, we managed to identify 26 tigers within our monitoring plot. They are 10 males and 10 females – two of them with the cubs (totally 6 cubs in two litters). The most remarkable fact is that one tigress has four cubs which happens quite rarely, and testifies that the tiger group feels safe and secured in the Park. Some of the images impressed a lot, for instance, the photo with a tigress and two cubs dining with a boar killed earlier by the male tiger. The right choice of the place for mounting the camera trap helped to get a number of nice images, for example, with Nepal martens and the tiger having a rest right in front of the camera.”

Download

Tiger family

Bikin National Park / WWF Russia / Amur Tiger Center

Bikin National Park is one of the key habitat of the Amur tiger preserving 10% of this subspecies world population. Annual estimates of tiger numbers in the national park with camera traps is the main part of this rare predator monitoring in the southern Far East.

Download

Nepal martens

Bikin National Park / WWF Russia / Amur Tiger Center

«The Amur tiger census on its entire home range is very complex and expensive work which cannot be conducted very often. That’s why annual monitoring over tiger population status is critically important. The implementation of new technologies allows to estimate the number and density of predators by certain standards and therefore to avoid subjective assessment of the experts. Such monitoring makes it possible to keep an eye over the dynamics in main indicators of the population status and reveals the efficiency of protection measures. – comments Alexey Kostyria, rare species conservation unit at WWF Russia Amur branch.

The Amur tiger monitoring in Bikin National Park is carried out with the support of WWF Russia and the Amur Tiger Center.

Cover photo: Bikin National Park / WWF Russia / the Amur Tiger Center

For additional information please contact

Alexey Kostyria

Senior Project coordinator