The Siberian tiger is the rarer of the two main subspecies with no more than 450 wild tigers remaining.
The Siberian tiger measures from 6.5 to 12 feet in length (that includes its tail) and can weigh from
400 to 800 pounds. The Siberian tiger has thick yellow- orange fur with dark stripes.
Wild Siberian
tigers are found in Russia and China today. In Russia the Siberian tiger is sometimes called the Amur
tiger, Manchurian tiger and the Northeast China tiger.
The World Conservation Union considers the
status of the Siberian tiger to be Critical. They estimate that the tigers numbers fell to only 24 during
the 1940s and have risen to possibly as many as 200 by the mid- 1990s. By 1996, the Siberian Tiger Project
said there were between 415 to 475 tigers. The Law of the Russian Federation on Environment Protection
and Management of 1992 gave the Siberian tiger full legal protection from poaching. There are 3 protected
areas for tigers in Russia's Far East. Kedrovaya Pad Reserves at 178 square kilometers, Lazovsky at
1,165 square kilometers, and Sikhote-Alin at 3,470 square kilometers. Its range extends as far north
as the Arctic Circle. In China, there are occasional sightings of the Siberian tiger near the North
Korean border. The Cat Specialist Group estimates that there are fewer than 50 wild Siberian tigers
in China. Because of such few numbers, the Chinese Siberian tiger will not last much longer. It is the
wild Russian tiger that we must look to repopulate the endangered Siberian tiger species.
The
captive populations of the Siberian tigers are the largest for all of the tiger subspecies. In 1996,
the International Tiger Studbook said there are 525 captive Siberian tigers in zoos. There are 182 in
the United States and Canada, 223 in Europe, 82 in Japan and 40 in other Asian zoos. The captive population
of Siberian tigers are all descended from 83 wild tigers and are thought to be a very stable and diverse
population.
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