CHANGCHUN, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Braving the biting winter cold, Yevgeny Stoma and his team trudge on foot through the deep snow of the vast mountain forests in southern Russia's Primorsky Krai.
As deputy director of the Land of the Leopard National Park Administration, Stoma oversees a patrol force of more than 100 people who work around the clock to protect the park's wildlife from poaching, fires and other threats.
At the other end of the vast forest, Yang Zhao, an inspector at the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, and his colleagues carry out similar tasks. Each patrol shift lasts at least four hours, during which they cover a minimum of 8 km.
This mountain forest, located on the border between the Russian Far East and Northeast China, is jointly protected by inspectors from both countries. It serves as the core habitat of two rare and endangered predators -- the Siberian tiger and the Amur leopard.
In the early 20th century, the wild Siberian tiger population sharply declined. According to some estimates, at one point, only about 500 individuals remained worldwide. The Amur leopard was also on the brink of extinction. To conserve these rare animals, China and Russia have made long-term and determined efforts.
In 2012, the Russian national park "the Land of the Leopard" was established. Its most important mission became saving the world's last remaining population of Amur leopards, as well as providing tigers and leopards with a natural, safe habitat through dedicated conservation efforts.
"Before the creation of the national park, we considered the option of capturing all tigers and leopards and keeping them in zoos to ensure their survival. But in the end, we decided to let them live and thrive in the wild," said Victor Bardyuk, director of the park administration.
This work involves numerous difficulties and dangers. Stoma has repeatedly been under fire from poachers and encountered various emergencies.
"There have been many incidents like shootouts, detentions, fights... We're not interacting in a library. We're dealing with poachers in the forest," Stoma said.
China has also been advancing conservation efforts for Siberian tigers and Amur leopards. In 2017, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park was established as a pilot project across Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, and it now provides a home for around 70 wild Siberian tigers and about 80 Amur leopards.
In addition to traditional foot patrols by inspectors such as Yang, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park is adopting modern technology.
The park, for example, uses an intelligent monitoring system that combines satellite remote sensing with artificial intelligence to track animal activity in real time, achieving individual-identification accuracy of over 95 percent.
As the world's first real-time biodiversity monitoring system over large areas, the monitoring system allows scientists from both parks to obtain key information on the big cats' population dynamics and habitat changes in the border zone under a data-sharing agreement.
The steady comeback of Siberian tigers and Amur leopards tells a compelling story of successful cooperation. From a baseline of just 27 tigers and 42 leopards in China in 2015, their populations have rebounded to approximately 70 and 80, respectively, by 2025, occupying 80 percent of the Chinese park's area. Adding to this positive trend is a heartening leap in cub survival rate from around 30 percent to nearly 50 percent since the park's establishment.
Russia, too, has seen steady growth in the population of these big cats. The number of Amur leopards has risen from 35 at the Russian park's inception to over 120 today, while Siberian tigers now number more than 50.
Thanks to the joint conservation efforts of both nations, Northeast Asia is now home to the world's largest concentration of wild Siberian tigers and Amur leopards.
"We are all working toward one vision: the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature," said Duan Zhaogang, director of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park Administration. ■
