Saving the siberian tiger from extinction wins coveted conservation award - August 2006

The Whitley Fund for Nature has awarded its prestigious annual Whitley Award for outstanding services to conservation to Sergey Bereznuk, Director of a Vladivostok based NGO, the Phoenix Fund, who has been fighting to save the Siberian tiger in the Russian Far East. Sergey and his team have ensured that the number of Siberian tigers (now known as Amur tigers) have quadrupled over the last 15 years - he has pulled them back from the brink of extinction.

Sergey received his award - The Whitley Award in memory of Daniel Kelly and sponsored by The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation - from HRH The Princess Royal at a prestigious ceremony at London's Royal Geographical Society last night. The award is worth £30,000 and will go towards supporting Sergey's critical conservation work.

Tigers, leopards and countless other species in this biodiverse rich region face an onslaught of threats from illegal poaching, logging, conflict and human encroachment. But through Sergey's outstanding leadership and his teams' dedication and commitment, their anti-poaching operations and education work is finally paying off.

DSWF nominated Sergey for this award and, together with other international partners, has funded the project since its inception in the early 1990s when tiger numbers were at an all time low of just 100 individuals.

Author, wildlife photographer and BBC radio presenter, Mark Carwardine, who recently visited the work of Phoenix Fund said:

"Sergey's vision and dynamism are, in my view, the reason for the phenomenal success for the project to date which, in the short-term, will save the Amur tiger from extinction, and, in the long-term, funds willing, secure the future of the species".

Mark joined one of DSWF funded tiger anti-poaching patrols in the Primorye region near the borders of China and North Korea.

"I have never seen such tremendous determination against seemingly insurmountable odds. I was overwhelmed by the dedication and motivation of our anti-poaching patrol teams - they live in very rough conditions, are regularly attacked by poachers, and even their families are threatened on a regular basis. They are responsible for patrolling a huge area, comparable to the size of Britain, and yet have reduced the level of tiger poaching by half."

However, due to a lack of funding eight field teams have been reduced to just four with only three to five men in each.

"The success of the tiger project is directly related to funding - the more money the more anti-poaching patrols and the greater the impact. As the situation stands at the moment, it's as simple as that".

If you would like to further support the Amur tiger project please send your donations, marked 'Amur Tiger Project' (100% of which will go directly to the field) to DSWF, 61 Smithbrook Kilns, Cranleigh, Surrey, GU6 8JJ or donate here on line.

Further notes:

The Whitley Fund for Nature (www.whitleyaward.org) is a world-renowned UK charity offering a wide range of awards and grants to outstanding nature conservationists around the world. These awards are granted annually to dynamic leaders of projects which have a strong scientific base and local community involvement, bringing long-lasting conservation benefits. The generous grants are intended to enable winners to scale up their work from success at a local scale to a regional or national level. Following an application by DSWF on his behalf, Sergey Bereznuk, leader of the Russian NGO, Phoenix Fund, has been awarded The Whitley Award in memory of Daniel Kelly and sponsored by The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation worth £30,000.

Phoenix Fund was established in 1998 to help conserve Russia's rare and endangered wildlife, particularly the critically endangered Amur tiger - more commonly known as the Siberian tiger - and Amur leopard now found only in the Primorye district of Russia's Far East. These big cats face many threats including poaching to satisfy the insatiable demand for tiger parts from the traditional Chinese medicine trade, human encroachment, deforestation through legal and illegal logging, and a lack of natural prey species. An estimated 450 mature Amur tigers and 35 Amur leopards are left in the wild, and of the surviving tigers, only approximately 10% are found within protected areas. The numbers protected are not enough to sustain the population, and thus the future of the tiger is still at stake and depends on the attitude of the local people towards them.

Phoenix Fund's work focuses on law enforcement as the short-term key to the survival of the species, but recognises that it is the re-education of the community that will ensure the survival of the tiger in the long term. To this end, Phoenix Fund operates anti-poaching teams working in the inhospitable terrain of northern Primorye which is prime tiger habitat. Their four day long patrols, once or twice a week, have had great impact, reducing the numbers of tigers poached annually from 50-70 a decade ago to between 25-40 now.

Phoenix Fund's education and outreach programmes have also had considerable success. A Tiger Eco-Centre has been established in Novoprokrovka, visited by 2,600 school children in the district. Visits by Phoenix Fund's education co-ordinator to local schools, teaching children about tigers and conservation, are always very well-attended as are the summer camps set up for students to teach them about endangered wildlife. Tiger Festival Days have been set up in the towns of Vladivostok, Novopokrovka and Luchegorsk to raise the public's awareness of the tigers' plight and have proved very popular with participants and press alike.

As a result of these activities the steep decline in the number of Amur tigers has been halted and even reversed. From an estimated 100 animals left in the wild a decade ago, the number has now quadrupled although the threats to its long-term future remain. In just eight years Phoenix Fund is showing real success in winning the hearts and minds of local people and politicians towards conservation not only of Amur tigers but of their fragile habitat also.

And a huge part of this success belongs to its dynamic leader, Sergey Bereznuk, who is widely respected both on a local and national level. He is able to motivate and inspire forest rangers who daily risk their lives, local people who rarely come into contact with the tigers themselves and national politicians who hold the future of the region in their hands.

Modern tiger and leopard conservation is highly complex and requires a number of agencies to be involved. Luckily in Russian Amur tiger and leopard work there is great cooperation between Russian and overseas funders.

There are three main British charities involved - DSWF, the Zoological Society of London and AMUR. The exciting part is that British expertise, as well as British funds, are helping these big cats.

DSWF has supported the project since its inception in 1994 by granting over a quarter of a million pounds to fund both the anti-poaching patrols and the local education initiatives.

The Zoological Society of London has vets out in the forest working on how best to protect these precious cats from domestic cat diseases whilst AMUR, an Anglo Russian charity works with Russian celebrities to create a greater public awareness of the global importance of these unique animals.

David Shepherd said

"I am so proud that the long-term support given by my Foundation has helped to halt the drastic decline in the numbers of Amur tigers in the wild. It is unthinkable that such a magnificent animal, the largest of all the big cats, should be wiped from the face of the earth. That they survive at all is due entirely to the courage and dedication of Sergey Bereznuk and his team of brave men in the anti-poaching units who daily risk their lives, and those of their families, to ensure that the Amur tiger does not join those three sub species which have already become extinct during the last century."

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