Those people bring the most harm to tigers. The situation today is very
different from the situation ten years ago because, if I encounter a tiger in
the taiga these days, I am encountering an injured tiger more often than
not.”
According to Galina Salkina, a tiger researcher at the Lazovski
Zapovednik and one of only two women working full-time in the
testosterone-heavy world of Amur tiger research, about 80 percent of the
tigers she autopsies have been shot at some point in their lives, many of
them more than once. Sometimes, these situations end like this one did:
In May of 2004, three poachers negotiated access to a restricted border
zone in a tanklike GTS. Because they were hunting at night with lights,
the hunters were aiming at eye-shine alone without being sure what they
were shooting at. One of the men managed to hit a tiger, which then
charged the massive vehicle, jumped aboard, and fatally mauled one of
the hunters before his partners killed it. The crime was discovered, but
the commanding officer in charge of the border area refused access to
investigators. In cases where the tiger survives, it may hold the memory
in mind, and retaliate against the next vehicle or person who fits that
sensory profile.
There have been no attacks on humans reported in the Bikin valley since
1997, but there is conclusive evidence that tigers are being poached there
—by Russians and natives alike. In spite of this, tigers remain a relatively
common sight, and the age-old tensions between them and the pastoralist
Russians with whom they share the taiga persist, exacerbated by
diminishing game populations and loss of habitat to logging. The range of
attitudes seems directly related to personal experience: Sergei Boyko,
who clearly respects his local tigers, has almost lost his patience with
them. At the bridge maintenance camp where he works, five of the six
dogs they kept there were killed by tigers during the winter of 2007–
- “I am sick and tired of them,” he said bitterly. “They don’t leave