Tigers have nothing to eat: The government has confirmed everything we’ve been talking about!

Positive changes in the situation with tigers are already on the horizon. The first “movements” have begun within the government following our extensive work!

Let me remind you that hungry tigers have been coming into contact with people for several years now, and this year the situation has become critically severe — there have been casualties among both tigers and people.

We launched a public initiative and proposed real steps to resolve the issue! Our proposals faced fierce resistance, especially from those who openly call for simply shooting tigers.

So it turns out that people demand the destruction of tigers, a huge hunting community competes with predators, and the problem remains unsolved! Meanwhile, there are only about 750 tigers (!!) in our country.

Now, let's get to the changes!

When we started working — sending inquiries to agencies, to regional and federal authorities, submitting our appeals, they responded: “Everything is fine, there’s no problem.”

But we were able to raise the issue to the all-Russian level, providing not only steps to solve the problem but also stopping any attempts to spread calls for the extermination of tigers online.

The most important thing society must do is identify the “point of pain,” then pass that signal up to the federal government. Only after the problem is acknowledged at the highest level of power are real changes possible!

I wrote recently that officials in the regions, even if they understand the causes of the problem, often simply don’t know what to do! For example, on February 3 in Ussuriysk, they gathered to discuss ways to protect tigers, but in reality, they can’t do anything — there’s no “order from above.”

Therefore, our task — the most important and fundamental one — is to ensure that it is the federal government that confirms the existence of the problem! This opens up opportunities for constructive dialogue, discussions, and real measures to eliminate the reasons tigers come into contact with humans.

So!

In our country, there is the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation (the Russian Parliament), which owns the publication “Parliamentary Newspaper.” This is the official government publication covering the activities of the State Duma and the Federation Council. As a rule, they publish materials on legislative initiatives, comments from senators and deputies, as well as various news related to politics.

In short, it’s the official mouthpiece of the entire federal government, essentially our state.

This publication released an article entitled “Tigers or People: When Will the Predators Stop Attacking?” which fully confirms all the data we’ve been talking about!

Here’s a quote:

“Hundreds of cases of predators attacking people and domestic animals were recorded in 2024 in the Far East. Red-listed Amur tigers approach humans because their food supply has diminished. Meanwhile, the prey these striped cats hunt in the wild have run out of their own food, and humans are to blame. People build new roads, cut down forests without control, and harvest huge quantities of nuts, leaving nothing for animals to eat.”

1. The scale of real conflicts with tigers in 2024 was presented (it’s too early to summarize 2025, since the year has only just begun).

   
   

2. The government publication confirms that tigers come into contact with people BECAUSE THEY ARE HUNGRY. I remind you that quite recently, officials tried with all their might to prove that tigers are not starving and do not approach people because of hunger! I wrote a separate detailed piece on this with quotes.

   
   

3. It is confirmed that the cause is the reduced food supply, and PEOPLE ARE TO BLAME!

   
   

4. In addition to the decline in the number of animals (the tigers’ natural prey), the government publication notes that deforestation is also to blame. And that’s exactly what we’ve been saying as part of our public initiative — calling for a ban (moratorium) on all industrial logging in tiger habitats!

   
   
5. And the problem of nut harvesting is also mentioned. The information is brief here, so I think it needs clarification: nuts in the Russian Taiga (e.g., cedar nuts) are a key food source for many animals. It’s known that at least 500 species of animals and birds depend on cedar! It’s the center of inter-species connections. If there are no cedar nuts, the entire biological chain starts to starve, ultimately leading to the degradation of ecosystems and famine among all wild inhabitants, including tigers, because in the wild all species are closely interlinked.

Here’s another quote:

“The Amur tiger population is currently estimated at 750 individuals, indicating its stability,” said Irina Makanova, head of a department at the Ministry of Natural Resources. “However, experts do not have a definitive answer as to how many are needed for the full and safe existence of the species,” said Amirkhan Amirkhanov, an advisor to the head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources.

Again, the government publication confirms our statement that we practically have no real methodologies for interacting with tigers! There are no assessments of the state of biological systems, and no specific count of how many tigers nature actually needs. Even at the very highest level, leaders of federal agencies don’t know what to do and lack data on how many tigers we should have in total!

This is important in the context of calls to crack down on tigers because there are “too many” of them.

I have studied the extermination of tigers worldwide, and as of today, tigers truly only remain on 7% of their historical range, while in 93% of their habitat they have been completely wiped out. They no longer exist there!

Moreover, their extermination began with exactly the same processes happening in our country right now! First, the tigers started approaching people out of hunger, and then officials and local residents found nothing more “effective” than to “wipe them out completely.” As a result, THERE ARE NO MORE TIGERS!

We are seeing the last remaining tigers in 7% of their natural historical habitat.

Here’s another quote from Irina Makanova (head of a department at the Ministry of Natural Resources):

“If wild boars in the Far East were destroyed out of necessity, then the population of deer and roe deer, which tigers can also feed on, was already small, and poachers are further reducing it,” noted Irina Makanova. “But the main cause, in her words, is other human actions: improper logging of oak forests and the massive collection of cedar nuts, which leaves animals starving.”

And now the most important, KEY PHRASE in the “Parliamentary Newspaper” article:

“The authority to manage wildlife, including monitoring, currently belongs to the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.”

This is exactly what I’m always talking about: we need federalization — the creation of a Unified Digital Platform for the protection of tigers (and later all key predators in the Russian Taiga). This will eliminate fragmentation and “localism” in the regions, create a clear and accurate picture of tigers in our country, and also make it possible to quickly prevent any future conflicts. All the necessary technological tools already exist — we just need a special group under the government and proper funding without it being “pocketed.”

That’s the information! Our work, comrades, yields results in any case. We, as a society, can pinpoint the “pain point” on the ground and report it upwards — which is precisely why it’s so important to continue protecting wildlife and not be afraid to voice problems.

Remember how until very recently, all sorts of “experts” affiliated with officials — and the officials themselves — claimed that there were no problems and that there was no hunger in the Russian Taiga at all! They said there was enough food, and tigers come out because their numbers have grown too large and they apparently just don’t fit there anymore.

But the diligent and honest work of society has led to discussions at the highest federal level! It’s now crucial not to slow these processes down, but to keep them relevant and strive for further DECISIONS.

In the meantime, the first step has been successfully taken — all the problems have been OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED, and our proposals within the public initiative are already known to agency leaders. Let’s keep fighting!

We’re succeeding.

© PAVEL PASHKOV