Prince Michael: must be saved

STUART WINTER meets a member of the Royal Family who follows the plight of the world’s largest big cats with a passion

PRINCE Michael of Kent’s eyes are fixed with the intense glare of a big cat homing in on its prey. He is talking about one of his driving passions, the fight to save the mighty Amur Tiger and, for once, he picks up the faint scent of success. His luxuriant, grey beard bristles as he smiles.

News is filtering through from the tiger’s remote domain in the wild, impenetrable Siberian forest that all may not be lost in the struggle to stop this, the world’s largest big cat, from extinction.

Vanishing forest as well as a price on its head from Chinese medicine practitioners who prize the tiger’s crushed bones as a panacea for all manner of ills have put the creature in the crosshairs of poachers’ telescopic sights.

The Prince’s snug private office, deep in the bowels of Kensington Palace, may be a world away from the vast stands of pine and oak that coat Russia’s outermost reaches but he follows the plight of this iconic creature with a passion.

“This is something interesting which is new and hot,” he says with excitement as he reads a recent dispatch (he is fluent in Russian).

“There has just been made public some really good news... the Russian government has announced that it wants to set up a new national park to protect the Amur tiger and an even rarer big cat called the Far Eastern leopard, of which there are only a handful left. It is going to be called the Land of the Leopard National Park and it will cover 1,000 square miles and a lot of it will run alongside the Chinese border.”

The Prince is keen to emphasise the Russian authorities’ increasing eagerness to protect one of the gems of its rich natural heritage. He has long taken an interest in the tiger’s plight but now his enthusiasm is shared by the men in power.

“I am full of praise for the Russians for creating this park because it is going to protect some of the most endangered big cats on the planet,” he says. “The thing is, tigers are territorial and so they require a great deal of space. This park greatly increases the land available to them.”

Russian political will is beginning to lean towards the tigers’ side. After years of indifference about the Amur tiger’s fate, there is a gathering momentum at the Kremlin to save a creature that can truly be described as magnificent; a 500lb killing machine with no enemies save man.

President Putin is taking a personal interest in the tiger’s plight. There is a desire to preserve the animal in its vast forest haunts and Russia is also flexing its super power status to bring other “tiger states” to the conference table.

There are many who see the role of Prince Michael of Kent, a revered figure across Russia as a link to the country’s tsarist period, as another important champion in the tiger’s cause. Of the scores of charities supported at home and abroad by the Prince, his concern for the plight of the Amur tiger has made him one of its most influential champions.

On Tuesday, the day before his 70th birthday, the Prince invited me to his private quarters to talk about tigers. A few weeks earlier Prince and Princess Michael had attended a function at the House of Lords on behalf of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation and its Tiger Time campaign. Prince Michael has been patron of the charity since the early Eighties and is also a good friend of David Shepherd, whose wistful paintings of elephants, lions and tigers are regarded as modern masterpieces.

Among a stellar gathering that night were Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Joanna Lumley and Ricky Gervais but it was Prince and Princess Michael who held centre stage with their heartfelt pleas to save the tiger.

During the evening the royal couple captivated the audience with their account of how tigers and other wildlife are suffering in the name of Chinese medicine. Princess Michael told guests: “As long as there is a demand for ivory or tiger parts, there will be poaching.

“I have a surgeon who told me that crushed tiger bone would help my hip. If an educated person tells you that, what of all the millions out there? They believe that rhino horn will do things for them. How are you going to educate those billions?”

While Russia is making tremendous advances to protect its big cats, across the border in China, the tiger is still regarded with a mythical reverence; a mindset that has cultivated an illicit trade in tiger parts worth millions of pounds.

“It is no secret that Russia’s Chinese neighbours do not regard the tiger in the same light,” says the Prince, who believes gentle persuasion is the best course to change thinking.

“We all know that Chinese medicine uses parts of tigers. If we are going to cure this as a worldwide issue there is no sense bludgeoning people to do better and wildly saying the killing has to stop. I think the initiatives have to come from within the country. Little by little we can massage their thinking. It takes time but it allows them to come up with ideas of their own.”

For the Prince, it is a battle worth fighting. He has stared into the eyes of the Amur tiger and been