The awarding ceremony took place on September 6 at the national park office in Vladivostok. Satya Prakash Yadav, Member Secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) of the Republic of India, presented the document confirming the successful accreditation to the director of the Land of the Leopard National Park.

“The international accreditation is a recognition of the high level of the Park's work in many areas, recognition of its professionalism. Apart from the Land of the Leopard, only the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve is CA|TS approved in Russia. Congratulations on the well-deserved praising of your success,” said Satya Prakash Yadav.

CA|TS (Conservation Assured | Tiger Standards) is a set of criteria which allows protected areas to check if their management will lead to successful tiger conservation. It was developed in 2013 by the Global Tiger Forum (GTF), WWF Tigers Alive Initiative (TAI), IUCN and WCPA, and consists of 17 standards that help manage tiger sites and evaluate the effectiveness of this management.

According to Dmitry Gorshkov, Director of WWF Russia: “The CA|TS approval is both a significant recognition of the achievements of protected areas in tiger conservation at the international level, and a huge responsibility for the Park and its employees. I know this firsthand, as I was the head of the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve, which became the first in Russia CA|TS approved site in 2015. Obtaining this certificate is not only a confirmation of the high standards of site management for the rare cat conservation, but also a very serious analysis of the entire activity of the organization, the identification and elimination of weak points, which will improve the efficiency of site management in the future. We are happy that the work of the Land of the Leopard National Park on the Amur tiger and Amur leopard conservation has been recognized at such a high level and we are confident that the accreditation will make it even more effective”.

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The Land of the Leopard National Park

The Land of the Leopard National Park is the second Russian protected area to receive such a high rating for tiger conservation. The first holder of the CA|TS certificate in Russia was the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve in 2015. A significant contribution to the national park accreditation process was made by Yury Darman, Honorary Advisor of WWF Russia Amur branch, Honorary Member of the Global Tiger Forum (GTF), Honored Ecologist of the Russian Federation.

Comments Viktor Bardyuk, Director of the Land of the Leopard National Park: “We are grateful to the expert community for recognizing our common efforts. Each of the employees has made its best to ensure that over 10 years of the Park’s work, the population of rare cats has grown significantly. We will not slow down and will make every effort to consolidate the results and move forward. In particular, by protecting new habitats for wild cats, where they lived historically”.

The Land of the Leopard National Park is considered the “most feline" protected area in the country. Since only here in Russia four wild cat species can be met at once: Amur leopard, Amur tiger, lynx and Amur leopard cat. Moreover, the highest density of the Amur tiger in the Far East is recorded here. According to the results of the 2020 camera trap monitoring, 41 adult tigers live on the area of 268,000 hectares. They coexist with 110 Amur leopards. Since the national park establishment the number of leopards has tripled.

Currently, four more protected areas in Russia are preparing to undergo CA|TS accreditation: the Anyuisky NP, the Bikin NP, Zov Tigra and Lazovsky Nature Reserve.

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The Land of the Leopard National Park became the 2nd protected area in Russia to receive CA|TS accreditation