Alarm in Russia’s Far East as third person killed by Siberian Tiger this winter

A forest ranger in Russia’s Far East has died after being attacked and partially eaten by a Siberian tiger, the Primorsky region’s Natural Resources Ministry announced on Wednesday.

According to local Telegram news channel Gorod V, Andrey Kovyor, a former local politician, went to inspect a logging site some 20 kilometres from the village of Glubynnoe on Tuesday, where he was attacked by the tiger shortly after exiting the vehicle he had travelled in.

A colleague who had driven him to the site eventually walked to the logging site himself after becoming concerned at how long Kovyor has been absent, but was informed that nobody had seen him, according to independent outlet Kedr. His mauled body was discovered nearby shortly afterwards.

The Vladivostok1.ru news website reported that the tiger had torn off Kovyor’s arm and consumed some of his internal organs, and said that a search had been launched to locate the animal responsible in an attempt to establish the circumstances that led to Kovyor’s death.

According to Kedr, this is the third tiger attack in the Far East this winter, a record in recent decades. In January, a tiger killed a fisherman elsewhere in the Primorsky region, while in late November, a logger was eaten by a tiger in the neighbouring Khabarovsk region.

Residents of the Far East periodically complain of wild animal attacks. In February, villagers in the Primorsky region demanded local elections be cancelled due to the threat of attacks, which led to one resident being visited by security forces.

The Siberian tiger is native to the Russian Far East and northeastern China, where fewer than 600 individuals are thought to remain in the wild, though hundreds more are kept at zoos and nature parks around the world. However, efforts to increase their numbers led to the Siberian tiger’s conservation status being downgraded from critically endangered to endangered.