Sparta, the tigress, met her saver in Nordens Ark Zoo
In February 2007, two starving tiger cubs came to the road near a remote Primorye village where lumber men picked them up and called the Inspection Tiger. At that time there was no rehabilitation centre in Primorye so the four-months-old orphaned cubs were placed in the barn of one of the inspectors. Everyone tried to help the cubs – the villagers, unknown people from other districts, vets from the cities, conservation organizations including WWF. When the striped couple recovered and got strong Konstantsiya, one the sisters, was transported to the Russian Zoo in Penza while Sparta flew to the Nordens Ark Zooin Sweden where they became a part of the European Breeding Programme.
It was one of the meetings scheduled for the Russian team by their Swedish colleagues as part of the Northern Tiger Project run jointly by WWF Russia, WWF Sweden and the Nordens Ark Zoo. The agenda of the study tour was diverse. They got acquainted with photo-tourism facilities in Wildlife Safaries Finland; with the way how to manage protected areas and deal with conflicts with large carnivores; with the results of Arctic fox conservation in Vindelfjallens nature reserve; routine of taking biological and genetic samples and storage techniques; the procedure of doing the autopsy in the Veterinary Institute in Uppsala; landscapes restoration after forest fires.