There the
matter might have rested. But in 1989, a group of Soviet researchers arrived in
Idaho for a visit. They sat and talked wildlife with their American hosts by a
firepit, Yuriy Puzachenko, one of the Russians, holding the Americans entranced
with tales of “cats built like battering rams … solitary creatures adapted to
mountain and pine: ice-fringed apparitions that burst from shadow to ambush
their favorite food, wild boar, prey that can weigh as much as a grand piano
and can have tusks like sharpened knives.” And little was known about them because,
Puzachenko pointed out, the Soviet Union lacked the VHF radiotelemetry that
allowed for tracking the cats.
No field
biologist could resist such a pitch. Howard Quigley, one of Hornocker’s
graduate students, suggested cooperation and reported the conversation to his
supervisor. The Soviet Union was now open to joint ventures with the United
States. Thus was the Siberian Tiger Project born. An initial reconnaissance
trip led the scientists to pick Sikhote-Alin—a vast, mountainous nature reserve—as
the field site. Hornocker found funding for a year and hired as the American
lead Dale Miquelle, whose job description was to “inject himself fully into the
tiger’s environment, feel the changes in the weather, struggle up the mountain
slopes, and feel everything a tiger did.”
The premise
of the cooperation was simple. The Americans would bring their expertise in
tracking technology, the Russians their field knowledge. That knowledge did not
come solely from scientists. When initial attempts to trap tigers using dogs as
bait failed, it was a wandering park ranger, Viktor, who explained that healthy
tigers were indifferent to dogs and suggested where snares might best be laid. Trapping
a tiger proved hard, but eventually, a yearling named Olga was caught,
collared, and released. Her collar provided the team with her locations, creating
a picture of where she went, what she did, and how she lived.
