Campbell watches Yudin sharpen knife/ tigers in back yard/Yudin feeding tigers

Campbell:  Victor Yudin is one small man with five very big problems. In the backyard of his ramshackle home like a family of Siberian tigers. Koucher, Nurka, and their three cubs are among the hungriest predators on the planet. Victor has almost no money to care for them. In fact, he can barely feed himself.

01:00:00

Tiger runs up to chain link fence and growls and paws at fence. Hand holds meat up to fence

Campbell:  But every day Victor struggles on to save some of Russia's last wild tigers.

FX:  Tiger

Victor:  The tiger is like the president of the animals -it governs-

01:00:48

Victor with fence and tigers in b/g. Shot of tiger behind chain fence.

Victor:  ...not by decree, but by his actions-by his mere presence. The loss of the tiger will be a catastrophe for all.

FX:  Tiger

01:01:14

Dissolve to map of China, Russia, North Korea and Japan. Russia and Vladivostok highlighted. Zoom into highlighted town of Spassk.

FX:  Tiger

Shots Victor unloading dead pig and cutting it up. Campbell watches

Campbell:  Victor's one of Russia's foremost biological scientists, and came here to the town of Spassk to study animals for a scientific institute. The state has since cut all funding for the institute, leaving him stranded with no money to keep the animals.

01:01:38

He now feeds these endangered tigers with meat he scrounges from the nearby village.

Where is it from?

Victor:  Collective farm.

Victor feeds tiger/alarm of fence

FX:  Tiger

01:02:10

Campbell:  Inside the five hectare enclosure is an alarm to stop the tigers getting out. But the alarm wire on the outside is to stop humans getting in.

Campbell in front of tiger enclosure.

Fade up on super:

Eric Campbell

Campbell:  Koucher's fur alone would be worth about $5,000. But much more valuable is his body parts, particularly the bones, which can be ground up and sold in China as an aphrodisiac.

01:02:31

What you may see as a magnificent animal, a poacher sees as a bag of money.

Shots trees and lake with wildlife/Mountains and countryside/Seals swimming in water

Music

FX:  Birds

01:02:49

Campbell:  The Siberian tiger, known in Russian as the Amurski, once roamed throughout the vast birch forest of Russia's far east.

01:03:10

It's an area of quite extraordinary beauty, but for decades it was locked up. The border with China and North Korea, and the coastline along the Sea of Japan, make it a tightly restricted strategic area.  And to almost inadvertently, a haven for wildlife.

Shots burning logs/rangers check truck loaded with logs

But in the late eighties, Perestroika opened the area to trade and logging. When the Soviet state collapsed, much of the tigers' protection collapsed as well.

01:03:41

Today, 26 poorly paid rangers are all that stand between the tigers and the poachers.

Ranger climbs on board timber truck and check truck/ Truck drives away and rangers patrol road

These timber trucks skirt the Sikhote-Alin, a 4,000 kilometre reserve that is the centre of the tigers' remaining hunting ground.

01:04:14

All the forest guards can do is concentrate their searches on the roads around it. The poachers, like the tigers, could be anywhere inside it.

Waves lapping stone beach/hands check tiger print in sand

FX: Waves

01:04:39

Volodja:  That's a tiger print.

Campbell:  How old is it?

Volodja:  About a day.

Campbell and Volodja walks on shoreline

Campbell:  Like most rangers, Volodja works more from dedication that for money.

01:04:50

State funding barely covers his wage of $50 a month. He's even had to provide his own gun.  Times are so hard, one ranger was caught poaching.

Volodja standing on beach

Volodja: There was such a case...and it brought dishonour on the rangers. It happens because our salary is very low and we have to make a living somehow. It is really rare, it depends on the honesty of the person.

01:05:10

Volodja standing on headway/seals in water

Campbell:  On this day, Volodja is scanning the 22 kilometres of coastline along the reserve.

01:05:34

Some poaching is by highly organised gangs using boats or four wheel drives. But most poachers are more likely to be desperate locals. And those small time poachers could be doing even more harm than the gangs.

Shots wildlife in forests

Tigers depend on smaller animals for food. But so many of their prey are being hunted, the tigers are literally starving. To Volodja's frustration, the local courts don't even treat this poaching as a crime.

01:05:56

Volodja standing on beach

Volodja:  If the law was followed to the letter...the penalties would be serious enough. But frequently the poachers make a profit anyway. They pay a small fine but they are still left with a profit.

01:06:10

Shots villagers in village/Map of Russia with region of Sikhote-Alin highlighted and village of Ternei highlighted

Music/Singing

Campbell:  Trapping has always been an accepted practice in the far east. The village of Ternei, on the edge of the Sikhote-Alin reserve, was once a base for sable, elk and boar hunters.

01:06:38

Shots Rogotovsky chopping wood

Now, many hunters like Daniil Rogotovsky have become forest guards. But even he believes some tigers may have to b shot. In recent years he's seen starving tigers come closer to the village in search of food. Livestock have disappeared, some people have had close brushes.

01:06:52

Rogotovsky/ Rogotovky petting dog/Rogotovky in front of house

Rogotovsky:  I saw three tigers recently. I even had to shoot once, to protect my dog-the tiger was that close.

01:07:14

FX:  Dog

Campbell:  He believes the forest can no longer support the tiger population. And they may have to be culled.

01:07:27

Rogotovsky:  I am not against tigers but there is no food. I've hunted in some places where there is simply nothing for them to eat. They even take the spoilt fish from the traps I set to catch the sable.

Campbell standing on village street

Campbell:  So do you think hunters should be able to shoot some of the tigers to keep the numbers down?

01:07:58

Rogotovsky/tigers in forests and behind chain fence

Rogotovsky:  We must know the correct numbers. If there are 400 of them, the numbers should be brought down.

01:08:02

Campbell:  No one's certain how many tigers are still left in Russia. Estimates range from as many as 450 to fewer than 300. But scientists studying the tigers here are horrified at suggestions any should be killed.

Goodrich:  It's an incredibly special animal. I've worked on several different species and...

01:08:30

Goodrich/Goodrich tracking tigers

Fade up on super:

John Goodrich

Tiger Researcher

Goodrich:  ...no species has affected me emotionally as the way tigers do. And being a scientist, they're not supposed to effect me emotionally, but I can't help that.

Campbell:  John Goodrich and his partner Linda Kerly have spent two years tracking tigers through the Sikhote-Alin reserve.

01:08:48

Goodrich:  So what I'm doing here is, this is a directional antenna. You can see as I move it to the side, the signal fades out.

Campbell:  The beep comes from special transmitters fitted to 11 tigers that were captured and collared.

01:09:09

Observer:  So which direction is she from here?

Shots feet tramping across snowy ground/ Goodrich and Kerly walking through forests/Goodrich and Campbell talking

Campbell:  Within minutes of leaving the road, they had located a roaming tiger.

01:09:23

Goodrich:  We've got a signal of Dale. He's our largest male tiger with a radio collar. And we caught him in November of ‘95. He weighed 450 pounds. And we caught him just about a kilometre and a half up this drainage. So he's back up in that area somewhere. We're going to walk in and see if we can get a little closer and get a decent location on him.

Campbell:  What happens if you actually come across a tiger?

01:09:54

Goodrich:  Well, it's very rare and...

Campbell:  Tracking a tiger can be an unnerving experience.

Shots Goodrich and Kerly walking through forests with ice and water on tracks/Kerly sniffs tree

Campbell:  Most locals say you never one until it's too late. Not surprisingly, John and Linda try to stay at least 300 metres from the animal they're tracking. The closest encounter on this walk was with tiger urine.

01:10:02

Campbell:  So what is it?

Goodrich and Kerly in forests

Goodrich:  This is a mark tree. Tigers come along and spray urine in this area here and it's also rubbed, you can see the two hairs right there.  They mark to advertise their presence within their territory. So this is - smells fairly strong, and it's probably fairly recently marked.

01:10:18

Campbell:  So how close could a tiger be to here then?

01:10:43

Goodrich:  How close could one be? Ten metres.

Logo on side of car door/Goodrich and team study maps/Goodrich with antenna at side of road with logging truck in b/g

Campbell:  John and Linda are funded by a private wildlife institution, based at the university of Idaho. Their aim to fin how big a habitat and how broad a food base the tigers need to survive.

01:10:53

According to their research, an adult male can claim a hunting ground over thousand square kilometres. And that means poachers aren't the only dangers tigers face. The other is loggers.

Goodrich in front of hut/Landscape with car driving down track

Goodrich:  The offers that are going to start coming in from foreign timber interests...are going to be awful tempting, I think, particularly for local administrations.

01:11:22

Campbell:  And that could lead to even more loss of tigers?

Goodrich:  Right, more loss of habitat, and more loss of tigers.

Campbell:  For now, John and Linda are optimistic about the tigers' chances. They believe the work of scientists is persuading authorities to think seriously about conservation.

Goodrich in front of hut

Goodrich:  There is lots of land there. All we need to do is get the appropriate land management scheme in place and the appropriate areas protected and I think that tigers can be here forever.

01:11:50

Shots tigers/Victor feeding tigers

Campbell:  The mother of Koucher and Nyurka was one of the tigers John's colleagues were tracking. She was shot by poachers, when they were still cubs.

01:12:10

The American research project brought them to Victor. It's given him some badly needed help to care for them and their offspring.

But lately Victor has fallen out with the American researchers. He doesn't share their confidence about the tigers' chances. And believes their number may have halved since Perestroika.

Victor:  I took part in the tiger count in Spassk and Chernigov.

01:12:42

Victor in front of cages

Victor:  There are five tigers permanently living in Spassk district in the winter of 1995 and three tigers in the neighbouring Chernigov district. This year there is no trace of them in Chernigov and we must thank God if there are any left in Spassk. Is that many? The number has decreased by half! Black holes appear in their population and we talk about hunting or controlling tigers! This is a great mistake. We are cutting the branch we are sitting on.

01:12:48

Shots Victor washing hands/eating with wife

Campbell:  Victor believes premature claims to the tigers' recovery had made the world complacent about their plight.

01:13:24

While he cares for them and studies them, he doesn't get paid enough to buy food for his family.

He and his wife Lena, who was also a scientist, survive by growing potatoes and cabbages.

They can't even go back to their normal home in Vladivostok, no one else would look after the animals.

Victor and Campbell at table/

Victor:  The locals think of the tigers as they think of us-they are waiting for something to happen so they can have some fun. The rumours are being spread all the time that a tiger has escaped, or killed a cow-or a cub died-or something else. Some people here make it up for the fun of the village.

01:13:55

Shots John, Linda and interpreter/ schoolchildren with tiger posters/showing tiger skin to children

Linda:  First, if you like tigers and you want them to be here in the future, tell your friends.. tell everybody you know that if you see a tiger, leave it alone. You don't need to shoot it.

01:14:18

Campbell:  Part of John and Linda's work is to try to change community attitudes. At the village school in Ternei, they try to instil a love of tigers among children who may grow up to be hunters. There's no doubt the children are convinced. But it may take a whole generation before everyone sees tigers as a greater resource alive than dead.

Shots Victor opening shed/Victor inside shed/exterior buildings at night

Victor doesn't know how much longer he can struggle to look after the tigers. At night he sleeps in a shed to guard against poachers.

01:15:00

Victor:  A tiger is a lure for bad people-and here, the tigers are in captivity and can become an easy target.

Victor sitting in shed/

Campbell:  Have you had to use your gun?

01:15:24

Victor:  Yes, I have. Somebody came one night from the other side of the pens. The dogs alerted me and I had to shoot. But nobody complained. I must have missed.

Setting sun/tigers at night

FX:  Dogs barking

01:15:45

Campbell:  The Siberian tiger is one of the world's most powerful creatures. But like Victor's existence, the tigers' is also precarious. Loss of habitat, the lawlessness of the wild east, and extensive poaching, have combined to put their future at risk. And to people like Victor, the disappearance of the wild amursky wouldn't just be a loss for Russians, but a tragdey for everyone of us.

FX:  Dogs barking.

ENDS

01:16:30