The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

jeopardize the habitat of tigers, humans, and the game that supports them
both.
The most valuable timber in the Far East grows in Primorye, and a
person can be murdered here for showing too much interest in the means
by which southbound railcars and freighters are loaded with the perfectly
symmetrical cylinders of aspen, oak, larch, and poplar that the Asian
market demands. Much of what China makes from this Russian wood
finds its way into American big box stores. The reason chain store prices
—e.g., $20 for a solid oak toilet seat—seem too good to be true is
because they are. Stolen hubcaps are cheap for the same reason. In the Far
East, paying protection money to the mafia and bribes to customs
officials is cheaper than legitimate timber licenses and export duties. On
a late night drive through the snowbound woods of the Bikin valley, it is
not unusual to meet the black-market night shift—a Toyota van loaded
with fallers and their saws, followed by a flatbed crane truck—heading in
to work.
Because Russia’s forests are so big and so vulnerable, some American
scientists became concerned in the early 1990s when they realized that
perestroika had opened the door to a run on Russia’s natural resources. A
handful of journalists reported on this and, when they looked more
closely, they noticed the tigers, which came as a surprise to many
Westerners, who had no clear idea where “Siberian” tigers actually lived,
or even what color they were. At the same time, Vladimir Schetinin and
other local biologists and hunting managers realized that, in addition to
other forest crimes, the number of tigers being killed and smuggled out of
Russia was accelerating at a frightening rate. Federal and local
governments were in turmoil at the time and offered little support; in
some cases, they actively contributed to the problem. Meanwhile,
wardens charged with forest protection were surviving on miserable
salaries, and many were turning to poaching themselves. According to
Schetinin, the tide didn’t really start to turn until the summer of 1993,
when an American freelance writer named Suzanne Possehl published a
detailed article in the “Environment” section of The New York Times.
“Her article was a very important trigger,” said Schetinin. “I will be