RUSSIA'S ENDANGERED SPECIES

    Dozens of animal and plant species become extinct every day. One of the ways to preserve biodiversity is to protect rare and endangered plants and animals.
    Photo: The Amur (Siberian) tiger is the world’s largest member of the cat family and the only one living in areas of heavy snowfall. There are slightly more than 450 Amur tigers in Russia.

   The Amur leopard, also known as the Manchurian leopard, is one of the most rare and beautiful cats in the world and the only one living so far north. Human activity has dramatically reduced its habitat, making the Amur leopard critically endangered. There are no more than 40 of these cats in the world, 30 in the Primorye Territory in Russia’s Far East.

    The Siberian crane, also known as the Siberian white crane or the snow crane, has been added to Russia’s Red Data Book and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as a “critically endangered species.” There were as few as three Siberian crane couples in the Oka Reserve in the late 1990s.
Photo: Siberian cranes hatched in the Oka Reserve.

    The snow leopard, said to embody the spirit of the mountains, is a moderately large cat living high in the mountains of 13 countries, including Russia. Elusive by nature, there are few studies of this leopard and its exact numbers are unknown.

    The gray whale lives in the Sea of Okhotsk off Sakhalin in Russia’s Far East. The oldest baleen whale, it feeds on small sea animals including amphipods in northern waters during five months in the summer and on its reserves the rest of the year. There are about 100 gray whales in the world

    The white stork lives only in the Amur River region and is considered a symbol of the area. It dislikes humans and never nests near them. There are about 400 white stork couples in the world.

    The European bison, Europe’s only large bull that has survived centuries of hunting, has always symbolized the power of nature and of the earth. It is listed as “vulnerable” in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

    Leopards once lived in the Caucasus Mountains, but the population was gradually wiped out by humans. Now the only animals living in their historical homeland are in the Caucasian Reserve, and occasionally wander from northern Iran. Photo: A female leopard at Sochi National Park.

    The saiga antelope, recognizable by an extremely unusual, oversized and flexible nose structure, migrates in the thousands, driven by its own criteria. Their numbers grow or decrease for no apparent reason, and so the current goal is to establish rational rules for hunting them.

    A long time ago, the Russian Desman could be found all over Europe, but its habitat has dwindled to a few countries, including Russia. The semi-aquatic animal lives in burrows built into the banks of ponds and slow moving streams; they often become entangled in nets and die.

   The polar bear is the world’s largest predator. Although up to three meters long and weighing as much as 800 kilogrammes, the polar bear is a very good swimmer who can swim dozens of kilometers into the high seas. Its habitat in Russia is between Franz Joseph Land and Chukotka.