Russian land battle over rare leopards’ favoured spot
The mountains are velveteen emerald, the rivers crystal turquoise, the meadows lush with new grass and head-high bursts of purple and yellow flowers. But it would be a mistake to wax lyrical about Russia’s Caucasian State Nature Biosphere Reserve within earshot of Alexander Yurkov.
“Romance dies on the first day here,” said the 47-year-old state inspector during a recent four-day mounted patrol. “We get people like that coming to work here. They are finished after a few months.”
By turns horseman, farrier, policeman, forester, carpenter, tracker, and rescue worker, he has for more than two decades been paid by the Russian government to guard and maintain one of the most remarkable landscapes in Europe. It is a tough job that, he makes clear, leaves no room for illusions about the natural world.
But now Mr Yurkov and his colleagues have found themselves at the forefront of perhaps the most romantic endeavours of recent times: an attempt to restore Europe’s only population of big cats. A maze of precipitous mountain valleys and impenetrable forest north and east of the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the reserve was set aside in 1924 for endangered species, including the European bison, wolves, and brown bears.
Like all Russian zapovedniks, or strict nature reserves, it is almost entirely closed to the public.
The Daily Telegraph was granted rare access alongside the forest inspectors who guard the area and the scientists who study it.
Last summer, the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, with Kremlin backing, released three young Persian leopards into one of the valleys in the eastern section of the reserve.
The trio – one female, Victoria, and two males, Alous and Kili – were the first offspring of a painstaking breeding and rehabilitation programme that aims to restore a population wiped out by trophy hunting, poison and snares in the first half of the 20th century.
Conservationists hope they will spread across the main ridge of the Caucasus Mountains, linking up with small surviving groups in Azerbaijan and Dagestan until their descendants are again roaming the whole region between the Black and Caspian seas.
“We’re usually hearing about animals dying out. You don’t often hear about them reappearing – so it’s a
‘We’re usually hearing about animals dying out. You don’t often hear about them reappearing’
great example of what can be achieved,” said Igor Chestin, the president of WWF Russia and a champion of reintroducing leopards here since doing field research in the area in the Seventies and Eighties.
A year after the release, Mr Chestin is confident enough to call the experiment a success.
The animals have survived their first winter, appear to be hunting successfully, and have only been glimpsed by humans twice. No one is ever entirely sure where they are.
Although the cats wear satellite tracking collars, signals are haphazard because they require a clear view to the sky and cannot transmit from below the canopy of the forest, and one of the leopards has lost its collar completely.
“When you add together the zapovednik, the Sochi National Park, the reserves across the border [in Georgia and the breakaway region of Abkhazia], you’re talking about half a million hectares of wilderness,” said Alim Pkhitikov, a researcher from the Institute for Mountain Ecology in Nalchik. “And we are looking for three leopards.”
With just three breeding-age animals so far released, the programme is vulnerable.
Mr Yurkov, who admitted to once threatening to feed a poacher to a bear, said illegal hunting had dropped off in recent years. But he still fears snares, often set for other animals, could kill a
‘If the Russian president had made up his mind, there wouldn’t be anything to talk about’
leopard – something that contributed to their extinction in the early 20th century. He also warned that unscrupulous trophy hunters would be tempted to have a go at bagging one of “Putin’s leopards”.
The scientists and conservationists are worried about something else – the breakdown of the delicate alliance of government, international, and private-sector stakeholders that made the project possible.
Winning Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s personal backing was key to opening administrative doorways, said Mr Chestin. Others who needed convincing were Russia’s ministry of environment and natural resources, the governments of Turkmenistan and Iran, which donated wild breeding leopards for the establishment of the new centre, international zoological organisations that approved the donation of other breeding animals from zoos in Portugal, and an assortment of private and state-owned businesses that contributed funding.
But other branches of government and private interests are pushing to expand government-backed resorts built for the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics into an area earmarked for the reserve.
Two resorts – Laura, operated by state energy monopoly Gazprom, and Rosa Khutor, operated by a company owned by the oligarch Vladimir Potanin – have described plans to build ski slopes and accommodation in the Mzymta river basin. Mr Chestin said that would cut off an access corridor the leopards are expected to use to spread across the main Caucasian ridge.
The plans so far remain on the drawing board. Development inside the boundaries of zapovedniks is strictly prohibited, so realising those plans would require a change in the law to adjust the reserve’s boundaries.
Gazprom and Rosa Khutor did not respond to emailed requests to comment. However, Rosa Khutor told the Telegraph last year that its expansion would be in line with all environmental requirements to preserve rare species.
But behind the scenes, a furious lobbying war is unfolding, with powerful government officials on both sides. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has at least twice in the past year written to Mr Putin warning against ski resort expansion, while Dmitry Kozak, the deputy prime minister, has lobbied the ministry of environment on Gazprom and Rosa Khutor’s behalf.
WWF has sought to enlist outside support. “We are gathering expert opinion, data, and other evidence to present to the decision makers. And I am pretty sure the decision maker in this case is the president of Russia,” said Mr Chestin.
“If he had made up his mind, there wouldn’t be anything to talk about,” he added.