Vladik, tiger terror of Vladivostok, returns from the wild after 400-mile round trip
A SIBERIAN tiger that was captured after it prowled Vladivostok a year ago, terrifying residents – and was later released into the wild – is back.
Dubbed “Vladik” after the nickname for this port city of 600,000 near Russia’s borders with China and North Korea, the Amur tiger this week came near the village of Yasnoye, not far from Vladivostok airport – completing an odyssey of more than 400 miles to return. Scientists have followed it via a GPS collar since it was released last May in Bikin National Park after its capture last year.
On the long trip back, Vladik crossed a Trans-siberian Railway track and killed and ate three Himalayan black bears. Yesterday, scientists said it had begun heading north away from the city. The news came as a hunt began for another tiger that killed a 43-year-old man gathering pine cones in the neighbouring Khabarovsk region. The beast will be tranquillised and either kept in captivity or “rehabilitated” and released, Sergei Donskoi, the natural resources minister, said yesterday.
Vladik first appeared in Vladivostok in October 2016, roaming the suburbs for several days and coming within a few miles of the city centre. It was the first tiger seen in the city in 40 years.
Cell phone and security camera footage showed the tiger prowling a nearby village and highway at night and darting between cars on a busy road in broad daylight. News of the predator stalking the streets sent Vladivostok into a de facto lockdown.
Parents warned each other not to let their children outside, and a woman strolling in the woods was told to go home by police armed with assault rifles, the Siberian Times reported.
Armed rangers staged a massive hunt for Vladik with drones and infrared imaging. Once they tracked it down and tranquillised it, they kept it at the Amur Tiger Centre for the winter before taking it via helicopter to Bikin.
Once nearly extinct, the Siberian tiger has been making a comeback. In 2014, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president and a fan of the Great Outdoors, released three rescued tiger cubs into the wild. One of them sparked an international scare when it wandered into China, where the animal is often poached, before returning to its homeland.