The Amur River or Heilong Jiang is the world's tenth longest river, forming
the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The Siberian
tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur tiger, is a tiger
subspecies inhabiting mainly the Sikhote Alin mountain region. The declining population has been a cause of concern for many.
In 2008, the Russian
prime minister Putin was visiting the Ussuri reserve in Siberia, observing how
researchers monitor the tigers in the wild, when a trapped beast escaped and
charged towards a nearby camera crew. The macho Putin quickly shot the beast
and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun. Footage of the former KGB spy, who has cultivated
a macho image showed him striding through the taiga in camouflage and desert
boots before grappling with the tiger. A
few years later, however, the story of his protecting the TV crew shooting the
tiger with a tranquilliser gun was questioned with some environmentalists stating that the tiger Putin shot was no wild tiger at all
– and that the animal died as a result of the stunt. The newspaper reports
stated that the tiger, named Serga, was
taken from a zoo in the eastern city of Khabarovsk and driven several hundred
miles to the Ussuri nature reserve, where Putin had flown to check on efforts
to monitor the amur tiger, a cause he had taken under his personal control. She
was tranquillised, placed in a snare and forced to lie in wait as the
infamously tardy leader got to the site, and in the days that followed the rare tiger died, unable to recover from
the three tranquillisers used by scientists during the PR stunt.
Now Putin
and Tiger are in news again – this time defection – of a tagged tiger. This time environmentalists are worried that
the endangered animal may run into danger in the southern Chinese provinces,
where villagers are known to hunt down tigers for preying on their livestock,
an official from Russia's nature watchdog was quoted as saying. It is all about
a Siberian tiger called Kuzya released into the
wild by Vladimir Putin that has defected
- to China. Satellite tracking signals from a special collar shows that
he swam across the Amur River border on Sunday, newspaper Novaya Gazeta
reported. Ecologists say that the endangered Amur tiger was probably looking
for better nutrition but there are now fears for his safety after he left the
Jewish Automomous Republic in the Russian Far East. The deputy head of natural
resources management in the republic, is
quoted as saying that China will be informed about President Putin's tiger via
Foreign Affairs ministry channels but time is needed for this information to
reach local ecologists, and before then the tiger may well alarm the local
villagers and may even suffer.
Putin released Kuzya
- then 19 months old - and two other tigers into the wild on 22 May in a remote
area of Amur region. Kuzya reportedly was
the bravest one and was the first to escape to the wild taiga, the natural
habitat of the species ~ and it is stated that 'Kuzya knows how to avoid people
and did so well in Russia but in that agricultural area of China, it will be
hard for him.' The other two tigers - Borya,
Kuzya's brother, and Ilona - remain in the Amur region of Russia according to
the satellite tracking data while Kuzya swam across the Amur River border with
China on Sunday
The MGR movie Adimai Penn is touted
for the fight with lion. It is stated
that MGR had a lion as a pet (bought for the movie !) – and the fight sequence
impressed Raj Kapoor so much. A stuffed
lion stands in the MGR memorial (this photo taken from MGR memorial website)
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar.
9th Oct 2014.
