http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/world/asia/siberian-tiger-freed-to-roam-by-putin-returns-from-china-sojourn.html 2014-12-10 20:26:20 Siberian Tiger, Freed to Roam by Putin, Returns From China Sojourn Russian and Chinese conservationists said Kuzya, one of three rescued cubs that President Vladimir V. Putin had released, had crossed a frozen river between the two countries. === BEIJING — Kuzya, the Russian and Chinese conservationists on Wednesday reported that Kuzya, one of three rescued cubs that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia released into the wild last May, had crossed the frozen Amur River that separates the two countries, according to the tracking device he wears. Experts say there are fewer than 450 Siberian tigers left in the taiga of Russia’s far east. Across the border in China, illegal hunting has reduced their numbers to less than 30. Much of the demand comes from the Chinese side, where tiger parts are prized for their perceived medicinal value and a single carcass can fetch $10,000. Mr. Putin, who has sought to soften his tough-guy image by publicly cavorting with endangered animals, has made tiger conservation one of his trademark issues. It was Mr. Putin, in fact, who pulled the rope that freed Kuzya from his enclosure and unknowingly set him on a transnational journey of several hundred miles. The fact that Kuzya managed to survive his Chinese sojourn was seen as something of a triumph, given the ubiquity of snare traps, the large number of human settlements in China’s northeast Heilongjiang Province and what Russian tiger experts feared would be a shortage of natural prey. “I can’t tell you he’s going to stay in Russia but the good news is that during his time in China, he was very well behaved,” Maria Vorontsova, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Russia, said in a phone interview Wednesday. The same cannot be said for Ustin, another rescued Siberian tiger from Russia who, since arriving in China last month, By contrast, the scientists tracking Kuzya’s movements — and examining his scat — say he largely sustained himself on wild boar. Whether Kuzya will stay in Russia is anyone’s guess. But Zhang Minghai, vice director of the State Forestry Administration Feline Research Center in Heilongjiang, suggested that Kuzya’s latest border crossing was temporary. “Kuzya is very likely to visit China again as it marked the areas he visited with his urine, designating his ‘territory,’”