Siberian tiger numbers are down 40% on their 12-year average, according to a new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society.

WCS scientists recorded only 56 tigers at their 16 monitoring sites, these cover 15–18% of existing tiger habitat in Russia. The total number of Siberian tigers across the entire range was estimated at 500 in 2005, says the WCS, but there has been a four year decline in numbers.

“The sobering results are a wake-up call that current conservation efforts are not going far enough to protect Siberian tigers,” says Dale Miquelle, of the WCS Russian Far East Program (press release).

Not everyone agrees with the numbers though, partly because heavy snow may have reduced the movements of some of the big cats.

“It is absolutely incorrect,” says Vladimir Krever, of the World Wildlife Fund (AP). “There’s possibly been a decrease in the last two years, but definitely not 40 percent.”

The animal is listed as endangered – but not critically endangered – by the IUCN’s Red List, which says “according to a comprehensive 2005 population census, there are 331-393 adult-subadult Amur tigers in the Russian Far East”.

In other Siberian tiger news, a spokesman for Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has stated that one of the giant cats that Putin helped fit with a radio collar earlier this year is alive and well. Earlier reports stated the tiger had ‘vanished’.

Image: ‘Lutka’, photographed in Russia / Dale Miquelle/Wildlife Conservation Society