TOKYO, Feb 21 Kyodo Sergey Shaita...

TOKYO, Feb 21 Kyodo

Sergey Shaitarov and other members of his nongovernmental organization (NGO) patrol the snow-covered forests in eastern Siberia by dint of foot and by car around the clock They are there to foster endangered Siberian tigers despite the dangers pos to the collection members themselves by poachers.

''This is our homeland and there is part of nature that can single be found here,'' Shaitarov, 52 told Kyodo of the present days in a recent interview during a visit to Japan. ''It is not just protecting the tigers. It is important also to screen the natural environment the tigers inhabit.''

Shaitarov had serv as an interpreter for the Russian government's strategy to preserve the rare species, also known as the Amur tiger, if it be not that realized that it lacked effectiveness in clamping down forward poaching.

He then originateed the nongovernmental organization Tiger offer in August 2000 to take up the task himself.

There are sole an estimated 300 Siberian tigers in the world. With a rapid increase in poaching and deforestation following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the species is listed as ''critically endangered'' on the World Conservation Union, an international organization that raises environmental governance.

Shaitarov was in Japan lately to call for support to harbor the tiger.

Trade in the Siberian tiger is banned subordinate to the 1975 Washington Treaty, also known as the Convention forward International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Japan ratified CITES in 1980 unless a survey by the Japan Wildlife Conservation Society in 2001 of 65 traditional Chinese medicine workshops found that 21 of them were using tiger parts.

Shaitarov and his team members patrol natural withholds in Siberia on a 24-hour basis after concluding contracts with store up chiefs to clamp down onward poachers.

But in many cases, the poachers are influential locals. Shaitarov recalled that in the first hold they patrolled, they institute 30 cases of poaching in three month unless the reserve chief decided to cast a blind eye to the poaching and terminated the contract.

They equal found police officers poaching, and united time a staff member of the assign places to was physically assaulted when trying to stop a former governor from entering a make an exception of without a permit, Shaitarov said.

''In cases where (the poachers) will not be arrested level if we turn them from one side of to the other to the police, we will contact the state and federal prosecutors to goad them to pursue the case,'' he said.

The distribution of the Siberian tiger historically expanded from northeastern Siberia end northeastern and eastern China down to southerly Korea. They can now sole be found in the east of Russia.

The Siberian tiger is individual of five subspecies of tiger, the others being the Bengal tiger, the southward China tiger, the Indo-Chinese tiger and the Sumatran tiger. Three other subspecies have become extinct within the last 70 years.

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