The Return of the Siberian Tiger: Jonathan Slaght, TIGERS BETWEEN EMPIRES

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Francesca speaks with Jonathan Slaght about his remarkable book Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China.

Slaght tells the story of the 35-year Siberian (Amur) Tiger Project, one of the longest-running wildlife studies in the world, and how science, persistence, and cross-border collaboration helped bring a species back from the edge of extinction.

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Key Words: Jonathan Slaght interview, Tigers Between Empires, Amur tiger conservation, Siberian Tiger Project, wildlife conservation Russia China,
endangered species recovery, human–wildlife conflict

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Read Edited Interview Transcript

About the Episode

Jonathan Slaght recounts the extraordinary history of the Amur (Siberian) tiger’s decline and recovery, drawing on decades of field research conducted by Russian and American scientists working across political boundaries.

Our conversation opens with the story of Lidiya, a tigress whose seven-year reproductive record illustrates how a single animal can anchor population recovery when conditions are right. Slaght explains how the Siberian Tiger Project broke new ground by tracking individual tigers across their entire lifespans, yielding insights into reproduction, survival, territory size, and the pressures that most threaten the species .

The conversation traces how 19th-century border treaties between Russia and China fragmented tiger habitat, accelerating hunting and habitat loss—only for those same borders, decades later, to become sites of coordinated protection. Slaght discusses the pivotal role of Soviet-era hunting bans, protected areas, and later rapid-response teams that reduced human-tiger conflict by intervening quickly when tigers approached villages .

He also reflects on the conservation philosophy of “green fire,” inherited from Aldo Leopold and championed by early project leaders, which treats top predators as essential to ecosystem health rather than threats to be eliminated.

Finally, Slaght looks ahead, emphasizing that government commitment and international collaboration—including newly coordinated Russian-Chinese protected areas—are essential to sustaining the Amur tiger’s recovery in a time of climate change and geopolitical strain .

Read An Excerpt