The Chinese national park and «The Leopard Land» will join their forces for the preservation of rare cats. The representatives of environmental agencies of Russia and China discussed creating the experimental specially protected natural area (PA) near the border of southern Primorye during the bilateral meeting in Vladivostok the 5th and the 6th of July. The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and The Federal State Institution «The Leopard Land» acted as organizers of the meeting.
During the meeting the head of the Chinese delegation Bay Chanshaw told that with the help of camera traps installed in «Hunchun» and «Wangqing» reserves adjacent to «The Leopard Land», their employees are tracing leopards on the territory of China. Experts note that the population of the rarest big cat in the world has increased over the past decade thanks to state assistance and work of environmental organizations in Russia, and now leopard habitat expands, to China as well.
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In this connection there is carried out the work on the creation of a large protected area for the protection of the Far Eastern leopard and Amur tiger. There will have already been completed preparation of necessary documents, whereby several nature reserves of national and regional levels at once will be merged into a single structure – unified national park, bordering on «The Leopard Land».
-The future national park will become unique experiment for China. That is a pilot project, which will not only combine different types of protected areas, but will be deployed on the territory of two provinces at the same time - Jilin and Heilongjiang, - Bay Chanshaw told. – Now the task before us is creating of a unified management, which will be under the control of the central government. At the present time the preparation of the legal framework is being held there.
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The head of the Russian delegation, Deputy Director of the Department of public policy and regulation in the sphere of environmental protection of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation Vsevolod Stepanitsky noted the positive side of this international trend, when both Russia and China follow the path of merger and consolidation of protected areas with the creation of combined directorates, which helps to optimize work of the areas. There are «Zapovednoe Priamure», including several nature reserves and national parks of the Khabarovsk Territory, and the Federal State Institution «The Leopard Land», having united «The Cedar Pad» reserve and «The Leopard Land» National Park, - amongst Russian examples of such a course.
-We should not forget that wild animals do not have nationalities and they do not need passport for crossing the state border, - Tatyana Baranovskaya, the head of the Federal State Institution «The Leopard Land», noted. - The number of Far Eastern leopards is still critically low. The world's only population of this cat is dwelling on the territories of our countries. Efforts, made without bilateral cooperation, cannot help to achieve the desired result. We cannot act alone. That is why creation of a unified national park in China on «The Leopard Land» image and likeness, - is a very important step, necessary for conservation of rare animals».
Thanks to cooperation with the Chinese colleagues «The Leopard Land» for the first time managed to obtain data on the number of Far Eastern leopard in the world and get to know about the movement of these cats across the state border. When comparing the Russian and Chinese data of the photo monitoring the specialists managed to identify 78 adults of the Far Eastern leopard and 9 kittens, which were photographed in these two countries in 2014. And it was found out as well that 31 leopard of this number at different times had been traced in both countries. Wherein there are not less than 40 leopards dwelling in Russia, which have not left the borders of our country. There are about 13 of such – counted in China.
We should remind you that the Russian Geographical Society has been supporting «The Far Eastern leopard» project since 2011. Within the frames of the project there is being conducted study of the state of populations of leopard and its main victims – ungulates, and development of infrastructure of the specially protected areas within its range. The Federal State Institution «The Leopard Land» was founded the 5th of April, 2012. There are about 54 species of mammals, 184 species of birds, 7 species of amphibians, 8 species of reptiles, 12 species of fish, 940 species of vascular plants, 283 species of freshwater algae, 251 lichen species, 179 species of moss and 1,914 species of fungi are dwelling there.