An unusual pair of travelers spent last weekend on the road from the Netherlands to their new home in Kazakhstan, where conservation officials hope they will start the country’s first tiger family in 70 years.
Kuma and Bohdana, Siberian tigers who have lived in a zoo at Hoenderdaell in the Netherlands, under supervision by the World Wildlife Fund, which is managing the re-introduction project. The Siberian, or Amur tigers are close cousins of the extinct Caucasian tiger whose habitat they are being introduced to.
The two tigers will spend some time in a relatively small reserve while they acclimate to the area, and will then be turned loose in a much-larger area in a nature reserve near Almaty. It’s hoped that within a few years, there will be a tiger population of 50; the reserve has the capacity to support 120.
In preparation for the re-introduction, there has been extensive forestation and rehabilitation work, and three years ago, a herd of 61 Bukhara deer was moved to the area, in hopes they would reproduce well enough to provide a pool of prey for the tigers.
