Rare Tigers Threatened by Economic Crisis, WWF Says

NGS photo of Amur tigers by Michael Nichols

Loggers in Russia's Far East increasingly are cutting down Korean cedar pine, raising concerns that the endangered Siberian (or Amur) tiger could lose critical habitat and its prey could lose a major food source, the conservation charity WWF said today.

"Under pressure from the ongoing economic crisis, loggers are turning to the more lucrative Korean cedar pine (Pinus korajensis) as commodity prices for other types of wood fall, which in turn has led to large-scale illegal logging operations in the Ussuriiskaya taiga in Primorye," according to a statement released by WWF-Russia.

"Chinese importers of the Far Eastern wood have sharply dropped prices and demand for oak and ash wood as an answer to the world crisis," said Denis Smirnov, head of the forest program at WWF-Russia's Amur branch. "These species were the most desired ones for poachers before, but the demand was reduced after export customs duties for these species of timber had been increased from February 1."

"At the same time, Korean pine wood is still highly demanded both in domestic and international markets and is sold at rather high prices," Smirnov said.

Russia's Far East Korean cedar pine forests were heavily logged during the second half of the 20th century, particularly in the late 1990s, which resulted in a 50 percent reduction and left only around seven million acres (three million hectares) of the forests today, WWF said.

Although P. koraiensis is not nationally protected in Russia, its logging is either prohibited or regulated in certain provinces of Russia and China. "However, loggers typically exploit loopholes in regional regulations to launder illegally logged wood, often taking advantage of lax customs controls or by under-declaring the volume of legal exports," the statement added.

"This rampant and mindless logging is shocking and disturbs the habitat and prey base of some of the rarest animals in the world including the Amur tiger and Amur leopard," said Susan Lieberman, director of the Species Programme for WWF-International.