China and Russia plan to implement projects to protect tigers and leopards

Experts and scientists from China and Russia plan to carry out bilateral scientific and technical cooperation to enhance protection of wild tigers and leopards. The day before, the online meeting was broadcast from the city of Hunchun in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin.

Siberian tigers and leopards are mainly distributed in the Russian Far East and north-eastern China. In the early twentieth century, due to habitat destruction and other factors, the numbers of these two species declined sharply. In recent years, however, a number of effective conservation efforts by China and Russia have led to the recovery of their populations.

According to Feng Limin, deputy director of the Siberian Tiger and Leopard Monitoring and Research Centre at the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, new technology plays a key role.

He said at the meeting that the integrated real-time monitoring system developed in China for the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park was innovative. It allows real-time monitoring of wildlife, human activities and habitats, using modern communications, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other technologies.

Since its introduction in 2018, the real-time monitoring system has produced more than 15 million biodiversity videos, effectively contributing to the accurate and intelligent management of national parks. The system is currently being promoted in other national parks in China.

Yang Haitao, a junior researcher at the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University, said there are great prospects for the application of remote sensing, lidar and other technologies to protect wild Siberian tigers and leopards.

He urged both sides to cooperate in depth with research groups in China and Russia to conduct accurate animal behaviour studies. This was reported on the official website of Jilin province.