Gleb Bryanski, Reuters 19 Sep 09;
SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin released two leopards into the wild Saturday in a bid to revive the fortunes of the rare cats in the Caucasus and soothe ecological worries over 2014 Sochi Games.
Caucasian or Persian leopards disappeared from the Caucasus in the 1920s due to excessive hunting. Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov sent two male leopards caught in Turkmenistan by plane to Sochi. Female leopards are to follow.
"We are standing here and admiring your animals. Glorious animals, very beautiful," Putin, surrounded by International Olympic Committee members, told Berdymukhamedov by telephone as he stood by the cage in the Sochi national park.
Russia won the right to host 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi and major construction works are about to begin.
Critics say huge construction projects may harm the environment. They question the need for spending billions of dollars on the games during a financial crisis and say they do not believe all the infrastructure would be ready by 2014.
"I think Russia is on its way to organizing an exceptional Olympic Games," French Alpine skiing legend and IOC member Jean-Claude Killy told reporters.
Russia's most popular politician, Putin, enjoys a tough guy image, being photographed riding bare-chested on horse back, fishing in Siberia or saving tigers in Russia's Far East.
Saturday, Putin stared in silence at one of the leopards, which initially refused to abandon his traveling cage, visibly stressed after its long journey.
"Good boy," Putin said as the cat snarled at him and jumped out while guards and reporters pulled back. "We have found common language, they understand me," said Putin.
The leopards will gradually move to a larger fenced area of the park before they are released into the wild. Scientists plan to bring female leopards at a later stage and hope some 30-50 cats will be living around Sochi in six years.
(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski, writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov)
Flying Turkmen leopards to bring species back to Caucasus
WWF 23 Sep 09;
Sochi, Russia: Two leopards from Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan are recovering after a long flight and car ride to their new homes in a Russian national park, as part of efforts to reintroduce the species into the Caucasus region.
The leopards were moved into spacious pens in Sochi National Park in southwestern Russia as part of a species reintroduction programme implemented by WWF and the Russian government.
They travelled more than 1,000 kilometers by plane and then by car, and are in good health despite the long trip and being put under anesthesia.
Upon arrival, the leopards were met by WWF, park staff and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Saturday and then released into large pens inside a special center created for them in the park.
The big cats (Panthera pardus saxicolor) will take part in the Programme for Persian Leopard Reintroduction, developed by experts from WWF and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and approved by the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology.
“There are very few leopards in the whole of Caucasus, only a few dozen,” said Igor Chestin, WWF-Russia CEO. “They exist with the help of some inflow from Iran, which has several hundreds remaining. We want to create a new, Northern-based nucleus of the population, so that together with the Southern nucleus in Iran it can guarantee sustainability for the leopard population both in the Russian Caucasus and neighboring countries.”
The Leopards are already actively moving around. They drink a lot of water, which is normal after anesthesia, and one of them on Sunday ate a slab of meat given to him by veterinarians. Both leopards are males.
“They will have time to adapt to the new conditions and start to feel ownership of the territory by the time females arrive ”, said Umar Semyonov, deputy director of the Sochi national park. “And it will be easier for females to adapt with support from males.”
The leopards from Turkmenistan will live in the Centre for breeding and rehabilitation in the Sochi national park. Only their descendants will be released into the wild in the Caucasus strict nature reserve.
“Areas for future release were carefully chosen to resemble as much as possible leopards’ habitat in Turkmenistan, both in terms of relief and prey,” said Professor Anatoly Kudaktin, programme scientific supervisor. “Conditions in the Caucasus will be even more comfortable in some ways than in Turkmenistan, and ungulate density is higher here.”
These types of leopards are endangered because most of their habitats were lost in the last century due to transformation and migration routes between remaining isolated populations are cut off due to infrastructure development, which has led to small fragmented populations that cannot easily breed.
Financially, the Programme is supported by WWF-Russia, “Rosa Khutor” Company, VympelCom Group, and Russian government.
