Two tigers are now prowling the Kazakh wilderness, nearly 80 years after the last spotting of the apex predators in the country. On November 2, Kazakhstan's Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry announced the release of a male tiger named Amur into a nature reserve set up to host the big cats.
Amur will share the Ile-Balkhash State Nature Reserve, some 300 kilometers northwest of Almaty, with a female tiger from Russia called Umit who was loosed into the same reserve on July 31. Within 10 days of her historic release, the female had killed and eaten a boar and a wolf and has reportedly adapted to life in the Kazakh wilderness successfully.
Umit, the first tiger to be released into the Ile-Balkhash State Nature Reserve, walks through marshes moments after her release on July 31.
Valery Bilyachenko runs a recreational fishing base near where the tigers were released and is one of those in the area keeping a close eye on how the project develops. He told RFE/RL locals are largely opposed to the tiger reintroduction project.
"The main livelihood in the local villages is livestock farming," he pointed out. "There are pastures and cattle, and naturally, local people are worried that the tigers will kill their animals."
Some villages are located just tens of kilometers from where the two tigers were released.
"The tigers are now fitted with satellite-tracking collars, so their movements are being monitored, and we've been told that when the tigers begin approaching villages, special teams will be sent out to scare them away," Bilyachenko said.
Kazakhstan has vowed to maintain roaming "anti-conflict" teams to prevent incidents between tigers and humans or livestock. Additionally, automated texts will reportedly alert locals whenever a tiger roams within 5 kilometers of a village or farm.
Male tiger Amur was released into the Kazakh reserve on October 31.
"Our main goal is not simply to return these predators to their historic range but to establish a stable population capable of living and breeding independently in the wild," Kazakh Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry Alibek Kuantyrov said after Amur's release. It is hoped the two tigers currently loose in the reserve will eventually find each other and have a "tiger wedding," though experts say the chances of the pair mating are small.
For his fishing lodge business, Bilyachenko says he predicts little impact in the near term, though that may change. Two more young tigers are set to be released into the reserve in 2027, and the eventual aim is for around 50 big cats roaming the wilderness of Kazakhstan, opening the prospect of tiger-spotting tourism but potentially limiting people's willingness to freely enjoy the outdoors in the area.
A file photo of kulans running grassland in Kazakhstan
The Ile-Balkhash State Nature Reserve was established in 2018 and has been prepared specifically for tigers through the introduction of more than 200 deer and over 100 kulans, a donkey-like animal native to Central Asia that will supplement the "prey base" of the big cats.
The $30 million tiger project is a joint effort between Kazakhstan and Russia -- where the animals are sourced from -- and has been funded by the World Wildlife Fund, UNDP, and Kazakhstan.
Hunters carry a tiger in the far east of Siberia in 1954.
Kazakhstan was once home to a significant tiger population, but amid hunting and habitat destruction their number dwindled to an estimated 10 animals in the mid-1930s. By 1948, the big cats are believed to have disappeared completely from the territory of today's Kazakhstan.
"This project sends a signal to the world. No country has ever restored a historically extinct species of large mammal, especially a predator," Sergey Aramilev, the director-general of Russia's Amur Tiger Center, said of the Kazakh project. If the initiative proves successful, he says, the reintroduction of the animals "will show other countries that it is possible."