An expedition of the Russian Academy of Sciences went to the taiga to watch the Amur tigress on which Vladimir Putin put a GPS collar last autumn. I accompanied the team as Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent.
Though the Ussuri Nature Reserve might look a mere dot on the map, it occupies 40,000 hectares of virgin taiga.
Our jeep had been travelling for an hour along a serpentine road in a hilly country before the first sunrays penetrated the thick of pines, limes and poplars.
"Beautiful!" Jose Antonio Hernandez Blanco gasped. A Spanish citizen, he is a staff researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He stayed in Russia after enrolling for the Moscow University to read biology in the early 1990.
"It cannot be more beautiful than the Pyrenees!" I said sceptically.
"You see, everything is serious about Russia, be it frost or distances," he explained, his eyes sparkling merrily.
We stopped in a plateau, boundless woods stretching 200 metres below. Mighty pines made creaking sounds in the frost-the only noises breaking the silence. It was warmer now, minus 20 Centigrade. The night had been really cold, minus 28.
Jose's friend Sergei Naidenko produced an aerial:
"Our young lady must be somewhere northeast of here-game wardens have spotted tracks of two days ago."
No radio signals came from the collar, which meant the tigress was far away.
"No signal! She might be in her lair," Jose suggested.
So we went to the east part of the reserve, where Operation Tiger started last autumn. It attracted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin enough to collar a tiger himself.
Earring, as she is known, has been a local celebrity after that.
Operation Tiger was a project unique for Russia. Amur tigers had interested only foreign researchers previously. Now, they are sponsored by the federal Government. High time, too-no more than 500 are surviving in Russia.
"Take My Boots if I Die"
The expedition divided in two. Sergei Naidenko joined Sasha, a reserve inspector-a sturdy man with a weather-beaten face.
"She was here two days ago-there are tracks of three animals. A cub is missing," he said.
Earring is raising a family. Cameras hidden in the taiga made shots of her with three cubs in November. They were five months old, judging by the look of them. (For details and photographs, see kp.ru website.) There are usually two cubs in a litter-mother tiger is hard put keeping up more, especially in winter.
Jose and I went to the Crooked River mouth, from where Earring and cubs had come. We were tracking the tiger family in the opposite direction-it was safer that way.
Suddenly, Jose caught a signal:
"Here they are!"
The signal came from a hill which Sergei and Sasha were climbing.
"Take care, Sergei, she is about three hundred metres ahead of you-the signal is very loud," Jose said in his walkie-talkie.
"You can have my boots if I die," Sergei guffawed back.
"Think there will be any? She'll have you boots and all," Jose snapped as he switched off the walkie-talkie.
"The editor told me better not to come back if I made no shots," I complained, putting on a brave air.
"These will be the last photos you make in your life," Jose retorted gravely.
Tigers Hunting
Sergei was in no danger, whatever we might be saying.
"Here's her catch!" Jose cried as he darted to the river, hobbling on the ice-crusted snow.
The tigress and her young had not left us much of a wild piglet-a skull picked bare, and four hooves.
"Ah, here's the third cub's track! Safe and sound, kitty darling! All accounted for!" Jose chattered joyfully.
An expert pathfinder, he read the tangle of animal footprints as a book:
"Here's Earring with the pig in her teeth. Here she lay down. Look-two cubs' prints! Why! The track divides in two! Hi, they were hunting like wolves!"
The piglet had been driven to bay. Earring watched it from the hilltop, stealing ever closer. The piglet shot away as she drew near-and the three cubs ran to intercept it as their mother caught up with it in a giant leap or two.
The cubs were almost as large as Mummy, as we gathered from their footprints.
"They should put on weight. They are like human teenagers now-big but with not much meat on their bones," Jose told me.
I don't think it will take them long to get fat, with their ample diet. We found the remains of three boars-one and a half a day!
To watch the subtleties of the tiger diet is one of the goals of the Ussuri project.
Stranger Appears
Male tigers are far less irresponsible than they might seem. True, Earring is raising her cubs on her own but their father is always nearby, guarding the family hunting area. He was named Professor in autumn for the cunning way he escaped all traps, and so could not be immobilised and collared.
Professor is always on the watch, keeping rival males off.
"What's that?!" our team cried jumping out of the jeep on our way back. Huge prints-no shorter than 10 centimetres each-were crossing the road. The tiger walked here a few hours before, stopping at every deer harbour, and cut its paw on the ice crust. We collected the blood for tests. In our enthusiasm, we strode right after the beast.
"Hmm, all books say tigers never walk uphill," Sergei and Jose brought out, panting, as I was cursing the beast under my breath as I clambered the steep slope.
The tiger had negotiated a huge windbreak on the south slope, bare of snow. "Ah, I see, it's a young and inquisitive male! Look, he has broken through the shrubbery-and they say tigers are lazy!" Sergei was reading the footprints.
We came to the border of the reserve, tired out. The tiger had gone on its way. "He's gone! Aren't we lucky!" Jose remarked.
A tiger's habitat reaches several dozen square kilometres. Beasts usually follow their own beaten tracks. Several dozen such tracks have been mapped. The expedition will come back to the reserve as soon as the snow thaws off, and will stay well into autumn to set traps and hide cameras. The project aims to GPS-collar all tigers in the reserve.
Andrei Lvov