Wild Gift Raises Uproar in Russia

So what do you give the authoritarian who has everything? Well, if you’re a provincial governor in Russia’s Far East, you give him the pelt of an endangered Siberian tiger.

At least, that was what Yevgeny Nazdratenko, the Soviet-style boss of Russia’s Primorsky region, presented to Belarussian President Alexander G. Lukashenko last week when the latter passed through Vladivostok on his way home from the Winter Olympics in Japan.

With only 400 Siberian tigers left in the wild, the gift has outraged environmentalists and angered Russian officials who are working to save the species from extinction.

As governor, they said, Nazdratenko should be leading the region’s anti-poaching efforts, not undermining them.

“What difference does it make if Siberian tigers are exterminated by Nazdratenko or by some low-life poachers in grimy coats?” asked Vladimir I. Shchetinin, head of the federal tiger protection program in the region. “One thing I know for a fact is it doesn’t make any difference to the tigers.”

Once, eight subspecies of tiger roamed Asia, from Indonesia to the Caspian Sea. Only five survive--and all are in serious jeopardy.

In Russia, the population of Siberian tigers has been depleted as poachers hunt the animals with little fear of being caught. Parts of the tiger are highly prized by the Chinese for their purported medicinal qualities, and a pelt can fetch as much as $12,000.

The skin presented to Lukashenko apparently came from a tiger that killed two people in December. It was subsequently tracked down and shot by government-sponsored hunters.

Shchetinin said the gift was illegal under international law and that prosecutors are looking into the case. By law, trade in tiger parts is strictly prohibited, he said, and a pelt recovered by the government must be destroyed or turned over to a museum.

Nazdratenko’s office did not seek an exemption for the gift or permission for Lukashenko to take the pelt out of the country, he added.

“How could the governor, who should be the embodiment of correct behavior, set such a bad example?” Shchetinin asked. “He looks pretty much like a typical Soviet-era party boss who allows himself the luxury of doing things for which others would go to jail.”

In fact, Nazdratenko and Lukashenko are soul mates from Communist days who, in the far reaches of the former Soviet empire, run their fiefdoms like autocrats.

During Nazdratenko’s reign, the Primorsky region has become famous for its political turmoil and economic stagnation. A long-running feud between the governor and the mayor of Vladivostok has led to the near-collapse of city services; all of Vladivostok’s buses stopped running this week, for example, because the city ran out of fuel.

Lukashenko, meanwhile, has run independent Belarus with an iron hand. A professed admirer of Hitler and Stalin, Lukashenko has shut newspapers and jailed opponents and journalists. Most recently, a Belarus court sentenced a youth to 18 months in prison for spray-painting anti-Lukashenko slogans on statues of V.I. Lenin and KGB founder Felix E. Dzerzhinsky.

In presenting the tiger pelt, Nazdratenko advised his friend to look often “at the fangs of the master of the taiga to remember about the most radical way to respond to the numerous attacks and intrigues from his opponents in Minsk [Belarus’ capital] and Moscow,” wrote the newspaper Vladivostok, which first reported the story.

Lukashenko’s office in Minsk would not comment on the gift.

“Nazdratenko wanted to impress Lukashenko and demonstrate that he is God almighty in his territory,” Shchetinin said. “But the effect was quite different. He only alienated his own people and triggered a wave of indignation among the public.”