Tiger's godfather - 23rd of March 2009

By Yuri Zhebanov (translated and edited by Phoenix) 

Last week, I got a call from my old friend Nikolai Kovaltchuk, former tiger catcher. He said he needed to talk to me, and came some minutes after.

Here’s his story: “Last night my dogs were barking all the time, and when at dawn I got out to see what was happening, I saw tiger tracks near the piggery. Judging by the paw size, it was a young one. The tiger came from the Bogatir Mountain. Before coming to my yard, it tried to kill a dog but there was a fence that hindered it. Later the villagers said that had seen the tiger twice. Finally it went in the direction of Avangard village and farther to the hills.  

Most likely the tigress was killed by poachers or died in a fight with a wild boar. Unexperienced, it could not hunt for itself. So, something was to be done to save it from hunger and poachers. After some unsuccessful attempts to contact the local wildlife manager, who was on a patrol, I got through to regional Hunt Management Department, where they promised me to send officers as soon as possible”. 

The next morning two wildlifes managers arrived and started tracking the tiger. It was obviously wandering around the abandoned mine at the crossing of roads to Avangard and Melniki villages. They asked the guard if any dogs had disappeared lately. The woman answered no, and added that just a moment before, the dogs had drived some yellow animal into the heating main. The hunt managers took a picture at random, there being too dark in the tunnel, and where they zoomed in, they saw a little tiger with its eyes sparkling. The people blocked it in a corridor 15 m long and waited for Wildlife Conservation Society specialists to come. They had no gun with soporific with them, so they had to knock up a trap out of a wooden box. Coming from the one side and roaring like a tiger, one of the specialists drove the tiger to the other end and – clap! – the grating went down.

The frightened cub started moving around the cage and, despite its small size, growling severely. We stopped taking pictures not to bother the animal. In its cage the tiger was transported to Ussuriisk town zoo. The next morning it was immobilized and examined by veterinarians. They found no wounds, except for blister feet and thinness.

The foundling turned to be a 4-month old female, weight 27.5 kg and 60 cm high (24 inches). After a few days in the zoo, the cub got better and started eating meat.  We hoped that it would survive and even return to nature. There was already a precedent, when a young tigress was rehabilitated and released, but unfortunately a year after it was found poached, and the removed radiocollar was found in the river… 

I won’t speak about drawbacks of state tiger protection policy, including those that we witnessed during this capture. If there had been equipment for immobilization, the animal would have been stressed less and all would have been easier. However, in my opinion A. Rybin displayed professionalism and even courage, having caught the tiger virtually with bare hands. Who would have agreed to go to a thin corridor and face a tiger, whatever young it might be? The most important in this story is that the tiger was saved thanks to people.  

I don’t know if God or some ghosts helped the poor creature by directing him to the house of Nikolai Kovaltchuk. Let’s not forget that it was very cold, - 32ºC at night. We can now call him the tiger’s godfather.

Tiger’s future depend on us all, and without this animal the world, and all of us, will get poorer.