On the eve of the International Day for Biological Diversity, two sightings of the extremely rare white roe deer were reported in the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park. At around the same time, evidence of tiger dispersal was found in the western part of the park, heralding the rediscovery of the king of the jungle.

This was all made possible thanks to images captured by the pioneering monitoring system installed in the park – a system that's able to send data back to the park's headquarters in real time.

100 years of human progress and habitat reduction

The Amur Tiger is the largest of the big cats, an apex predator that lives in the forests in the eastern edges of Russia and northeast China. As each female Amur Tiger requires a 500 km² area of forest to breed, they are indicative of the overall health of the region's ecosystem. However, habitat loss due to human activity over the last century has seen their numbers dwindle to less than 600 in the wild.

In 2015, scientists from Beijing Normal University and Russia's Land of the Leopard National Park began monitoring these animals in the hope of ensuring their survival. They found that at least 38 Amur tigers and 84 Amur leopards still roamed the China-Russia border. Of these, 27 tigers and 42 leopards were found on the China side in Hunchun, Jilin and its surrounding areas. However, they were concentrated in a narrow corridor of just 4,000 km².

Penned in by the sea to the east and south and railway infrastructure and marshlands to the north, the cats have to expand westwards into China's northeast forests if they are to survive.

In December 2019, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration tested the system across 5,000 km² of the park. Forty-two LTE base stations and more than 3,000 monitoring terminals observed an area of the China-Russia border spanning about 200 km, the location where the cats are most active. The network monitored their movements and habitats, as well as the overall state of the ecosystem.