President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia drew attention at an economic summit meeting in Beijing this week when he draped a blanket over the shoulders of China’s first lady and awkwardly clapped President Obama on the arm. But while Mr. Putin has now left China for meetings in the Russian city of Vladivostok, his legacy remains.
On Wednesday, a Russian official said that a Siberian tiger that Mr. Putin had personally released into the wild in the Russian Far East had crossed into China, the Russian news agency Tass reported.
The tiger, named Ustin, appears to be following in the footsteps of another of the three tigers Mr. Putin released in May. In October, 23-month-old Kuzya crossed the Amur River into northern China, triggering concerns that he might be killed by poachers, who can bring in as much as $10,000 from selling tiger parts on the black market.
While Kuzya, who is being tracked with a satellite-monitoring collar, has avoided human settlements in China, wildlife officials told the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua that the tiger might spend the winter there.
Ustin was reported to be on Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island, which sits at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers and is split between Russian and Chinese territory, Tass reported. Viktor Serdyuk, an environmental official, told the news agency that Ustin could turn back, but that China was prepared to take over the tracking of a second tiger as well.
Siberian tigers are endangered, but because of habitat preservation efforts in the Russian Far East, their numbers have rebounded to an estimated 370 to 450. Only 18 to 22 tigers remain in China, where tigers have been hunted for their fur and for the use of their body parts in traditional medicine.
The small population of Siberian tigers in China is dependent on the movement of animals across the border with Russia, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.