Pavel tends cub

Starts:

01:00:00:00

Campbell:  In a simple veterinary surgery in far east Russia, a tiger cub fights for her life.

00:15

Mashka is just ten months old.  She is as bewildered by her surrounds, as by her crippling pain.

00:24

How she came to be here in this condition is a sad reflection on the global campaign to save the tiger.

00:34

This should never have happened.

00:43

Map Russia

Music

Cows on road in Spassk

Campbell:  To understand how it happened, we need to go back two years to a small town called Spassk.

01:18

Campbell with Victor

Super:

May 1997

While filming a story on Siberian tigers, known in Russia as Amurski, we came across an extraordinary scientist called Victor Yudin.

01:31

Victor was fighting a one man battle to care for five tigers in his back yard.

01:43

Technically a state biological institute employed him to study tiger behaviour.  In reality, the institute was broke and couldn't even pay his wages.

01:58

Tiger in cage

Victor stayed out of sheer dedication, scrounging meat from collective farm to stop them starving.

02.15

With tiger numbers feared to be as low as 300, he felt the world could not afford to lose any more.

02.27

Victor:  The tiger is like a president of animals.  He governs... not by decree, but by his actions... by his mere presence.  The loss of the tiger will be a catastrophe for all.

02.37

Victor feeds tigers

Campbell:  Victor's plight produced an extraordinary response. Australian viewers donated almost $9,000 to help him.

02.59

The Worldwide Fund for Nature delivered the money to his door. We came back to see if the money had helped.

03.12

Campbell:  Victor spent the donations on a pick up truck to find and collect food.

03.28

Victor in truck

It's temporarily out of action until he can buy new parts. But he says it has been a lifeline.

03.38

Victor:  It's a very useful thing... very useful. I am very grateful to all the people who collected the money and  helped me to buy this truck.

03.45

Campbell:  But Victor's troubles are far from over.

03.57

Tiger

Today Victor has only two tigers, Koucher and Nyurka. It became impossible to look after their cubs, especially after they gave birth to two more cubs. He tried to find a zoo to take them, but a lone Russian trying to offload tigers aroused suspicion, not sympathy.

04.03

Victor:  We wrote to American and European zoos but no one wanted to take them.  Everybody thought that we were breeding them for sale - that it's our business.

04.24

Campbell:  In desperation, Victor gave four of the tigers to the Moscow Circus. Not so they'd become performing animals, but because the circus has a better chance of talking to zoos.

04.41

Victor:  We didn't even want to charge for them - we just offered to take them to the zoos. But they wouldn't take them.

04.53

Photo of Mashka

Campbell:  The other cub, Mashka, went to a rich businessman, in nearby Vladivostok.

05.01

Pavel in office

Pavel Samolyanov is not the sort of person you'd expect to be sentimental. He's a successful player in the rough and sometimes lawless world of Russian business. But he took one look at Victor's tigers, and decided he had to help.

05.09

Pavel

Pavel:  The man and the tigers are just abandoned there.  He used to live in the city - and now you can see what conditions he lives in.  You wouldn't wish a life like this for anyone.

05.29

Campbell:   Pavel built an enclosure for Mashka at his country cottage. The caretaker's family looked after her. She grew strong and healthy. But two months later, police seized her to check Pavel's ownership.

05.39

Surgeon operates on Mashka

No one knows for sure what the police did, but by the time they returned her, she had serious internal injuries.

05.55

When we first saw Mashka, she was having her second operation at the local vet's.

06.03

Mashka on operating table

Pavel:  The police took her but I didn't understand why.  Later, when I went to collect her at night she was very sick. She had intestinal poisoning, so she had an operation, which seemed successful.  She started to run and it looked like she was getting better. But now... look at her.

06.10

Campbell:  To boost her chances, Pavel summoned a surgeon from one of Vladivostok's hospitals. He's come so quickly he was still wearing his surgical gown. This time the operation seemed to work.

06.44

Pavel:  I think she'll be okay.  She's strong.

07.00

Pavel and friends load Mashka into car

Campbell:  Pavel's associates were on hand to do what they could. 

07.07

But the experience has left Pavel angry about how little the authorities are doing to help.

07.13

He realises this is not the answer for the tigers' plight.

07.19

Pavel:  I think Yudin should be given the opportunity and money to build a park.  Not the kind of money they usually collect for tiger protection - that often gets nowhere. It goes directly into someone's pocket.

07.29

Bear in cage

Campbell:  Victor's stubborn determination is still the only thing keeping his animals alive. 

07.53

It is now four years since he last received his full salary of $20 a month. And tigers are not the only creatures he has to care for.

08.01

Local people have also brought him orphaned foxes, wolves and bear cubs.  He says he has not received help from environmental groups for more than a year.

08.07

Tiger in snow

Victor:  There are so many nature defenders now, that you could feed them to the tigers without any harm. That's a joke... In principle, many people come here promising to help - but as I understand it they only want to take photos of tigers - and that's it - they forget about help straight away. They just pursue their own interests.

08.25

Photo of tigers

Victor:  This is Nyurka, feeding a cub...  It's possible that it's Mashka, who's in Vladivostok now... And that's her brother who is now in Moscow with the circus.

08.37

Victor

Campbell:  Do you miss them?

Victor:  Of course - when you told me about Mashka  I thought it was a nightmare.  I feel so sorry for her.

09.12

Mashka on operating table

Campbell:  And Victor had good cause to be worried.

09.24

A day after her second operation, Mashka was back in the surgery. This time it was even more serious.

009.29

The previous operation had failed, and so had her heart.

Surgeon

Surgeon:   Her heart stopped, and she wasn't breathing - her eyes didn't respond to light at all.  She was clinically dead.

09.42

Pavel:  Can it be because she was taken by the police...?... because of the poisoning?

Surgeon:  Of course. I think that was what started it.

009.59

Pavel:  Maybe you should, you know, give her some medicine or something.

10.03

Surgeon:  No, hold on now - we'll have to operate again... We'll have to put all the intestines back again.

Campbell:  In desperation, Pavel summoned a second surgeon.

10.23

Mashka on operating table

It was a tense operation.

10.30

They managed to revive her, but the prognosis was pessimistic.

10.33

Surgeon 2:  The operation is over.  Now we'll try to keep her breathing, and her heart working because the whole body is poisoned and she's lost a lot of fluid.  She'll stay here for the night.

10.39

Pavel: What are the chances?

10.51

Surgeon 2:  About fifty-fifty.

Pavel brushing Mashka

Campbell:  Mashka turned out to be pluckier than expected. The next day she began to recover. The doctors now believe she'll be okay.

11.10

Pavel:  How about a punk hairdo, then?

11.22

Victor calling tigers

Campbell:  But for Victor, the same problems are about to return. Nyurka is pregnant again.

11.38

Victor will have to find a way to care for her cubs or find a safe home.

11.37

Few issues have aroused so much sympathy as the plight of Russia's last wild tigers. But even tigers that could be easily saved remain in peril.

11.56

It is a battle that people like Victor should not have to fight alone.

12.08