Amur tigers, one of the critically endangered species in the Siberian taiga, have been driven toward villages in search of food after heavy snowstorms that hit the Primorye Territory near the Pacific in early March, left thick layers of snow in the taiga and made it difficult for the tigers to hunt.
"They have set up traps around the village," said Vitaly Starostin, a deputy chief of the tiger inspection department at the Natural Resources Ministry.
Inspectors have been sanctioned to catch two tigers in two areas of the region after efforts to drive them away to the taiga proved futile.
Experts of the Russian-U.S. Amur tiger preservation project are taking part in the operation. Once the tigers are trapped, the environmentalists, who have been closely watching the predators with special radio equipment for ten years, will immobilize the tiger for thorough medical examination. The tiger will then be sent back into the wild.
In the past winter, inspectors received about 30 complaints from villagers in the area about tigers' approaching their houses.
Tigers in the taiga have had to move closer to people because extensive tree felling has reduced their natural habitat, and widespread poaching of hoofed animals is depriving the predators of their main prey.
Amur tigers are on the Endangered Species Act. The latest data says there are about 450 of them left in eastern Russia.
