Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has personally took part in a project aimed at saving Siberian tigers while on a trip to the Russian Far East, the media reported. The adventure did not go without some thrill – the RTR television said that Putin saved its reporters from a tiger that had escaped from a trap.
Russia’s state-run Rossiya television showed footage Monday of the tough-talking prime minister’s visit to the Far East, home of the rare Ussuri tiger. Russian media reports said Putin aided a program to track the tigers by shooting a 5-year-old female cat with a tranquilizer gun after it had freed itself from a restraint. The presenter in the evening broadcast said that Putin’s shot had saved the Rossiya television crew.
The news was quickly caught by news agencies and newspapers despite the fact that the real threat was unlikely, given that tranquilizer takes some time to work and that Putin obviously was accompanied by a team of bodyguards.
The televised footage showed Putin, deep in the woods, placing a collar with a tracking device around the knocked-out tiger’s neck and patting its cheek like a pet.
“She’ll remember us,” he said. Izvestia added that Putin gave the tigress a farewell kiss. Kisses are becoming a trademark of Russia’s national leader. Last year Putin planted a kiss on a giant sturgeon as he visited a nature reserve in South Russia’s Astrakhan Region.
One year earlier he caused intense but somehow mixed reaction by kissing a young boy on the stomach while taking an improvised public meeting with people at the Kremlin in Moscow.
Fewer than 400 Ussuri tigers – also known as Siberian, Amur or Manchurian tigers – are believed to survive in the wild, most of them in Russia and some in China. They are the largest tiger species, weighing up to 600 pounds (272 kilograms). Human settlements have encroached on the cats’ habitat, and they also are in danger from poachers who want hides and bones for traditional Chinese medicine. Russia has promised to protect the animals.
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