Kompromat

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jang Ling-Go, director of Forestry and Wildlife in China’s Heilongjiang Province, was in a foul mood. He had just received an email from his superiors in Beijing which had completely spoilt his morning.

The email read as follows: ‘President Liu Wang-Ji returned recently from a trip to St Petersburg where he was attending the World Tiger Summit as the guest of Russian president, Igor Popov. President Popov belittled China’s conservation programme as regards Amur tigers, stating that Amur tigers crossing the Ussuri River from Russia into China were being hunted and killed. President Popov, in a separate bilateral meeting with Chinese President Liu Wang-Ji, pointed out that whereas over 450 Amur tigers were now living in Russia, part of Amur-Heilong eco-region, fewer than twenty Amur tigers are to be found on the Chinese side of the Ussuri. Please report urgently on measures taken within your area of responsibility to safeguard Amur tigers, including the fight against poaching and illegal killing of tigers.’

Jang Ling-Go didn’t have to read between the lines. The message was clear enough. China’s international prestige was at stake. President Liu Wang-Ji clearly felt he had lost face – and in a very public way – and he wanted something done about it.

One of the reasons for the director of forestry’s foul mood was that he felt Beijing’s criticism was unjust. Yes, President Popov was right to point out that there were far more tigers on the Russian side of the border than on the Chinese side; and yes he was right to say that the Chinese had – in the past – made a habit of killing tigers which came their way, trading their parts on the black market for huge sums of money. But things surely had changed. His department was urging farmers and villages in the region to protect and not persecute tigers. His department wasn’t always successful, of course. He had to admit that.

And this morning’s news didn’t improve the situation. A report had just come in that a tiger had apparently forded the river and killed livestock at a forest farm on the Chinese side of the border. Pugmarks found at the site of the skill suggested that the culprit was a large, male tiger. The villagers were roused and seeking vengeance.

Jang Ling-Go called to his assistant through the open door. ‘Please ask Shao Wei-Lu to come and see me.’

Minutes later, a young Chinese woman entered the room. ‘What’s the story on the Shengle Farm tiger?’ Jang Ling-Go asked. ‘Are the rangers tracking it?’

‘They are,’ the young woman replied. ‘As a matter of fact, we know precisely which tiger we are dealing with. It’s already in the database. It came over from Russia three days ago, stopped two days ago at Shengle Farm where it killed two goats, and now appears to be heading back to the forest.’

Shao Wei-Lu opened her laptop. They gazed at the screen. ‘See that pulsating dot? That’s our tiger. He’s about ten miles from the river. Hasn’t moved for the last several hours. Probably digesting his lunch.’

‘Send a message to call off the patrol. Tell the villagers to go back to their homes,’ Jang Ling-Go ordered. ‘That tiger may have killed a goat or two. I don’t care. Our job here is to demonstrate that the Amur tiger is as safe on our side of the border as it is on the Russian side.’

Jang Ling-Go mopped his brow. The last thing he wanted at this point in time was a dead Amur tiger on his hands.

Shao Wei-Lu was still tapping away at her laptop. Jang was amazed at her dexterity. Though he was far from being an expert himself, he recognized that a combination of camera trapping and telemonitoring had transformed wildlife biology. Nowadays, judiciously placed camera traps recorded animal movements whenever the sensors picked up movement, with the findings being transmitted via orbiting satellites in real time to the control centre.

‘What are you looking for now?’ Jang Ling-Go asked.

‘I’ve just run the ID programme. Correlating the data from the camera traps with the known moments of the tiger, I’ve discovered that we are indeed dealing with a large male here, just as the rangers suspected. Looking at the record, this particular male – No. 127 in our database – appears to spend most of its time in Russia, but crosses over into China about once a month. The tiger, of course, doesn’t know he’s crossing into China.’

‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ Jang Ling-Go said. ‘The animals I’ve met have a pretty good idea of where it’s safe to go and where it isn’t.’

‘Hello. This is odd.’ Shao Wei-Lu seemed surprised.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘There’s an anomaly here,’ Shao replied. ‘We manage the database in common with our Russian colleagues. It’s one of the exemplary areas of Russia–China cooperation. Our Russian colleagues recently reported that President Popov had personally darted a tiger as part of their ongoing field programs.’

‘So?’ Jang didn’t see what Shao was getting at.

‘Did you see the video of the tiger President Popov darted the other day?’

‘Of course I did. It was on all the news channels. Khabarovsk is virtually our local station, if you don’t mind watching the news in Russian. I still don’t see what you’re trying to say.’

Shao Wei-Lu took her time. She sensed that her superior was in a tense frame of mind that morning, to say the least.

‘Look, sir.’ She added the ‘sir’ as a sign of respect. ‘This ID programme is very effective. Every tiger in the world has a different set of stripes. Feed a picture of a tiger into the computer and the computer will tell you if the tiger is already on the database and, if it isn’t, it will create a record for that tiger which can be updated as further sightings come in.

‘So what did I do?’ she continued. ‘I’ll tell you what I did. The tiger ID programme can work with moving images as well as still photos. A moving image is simply a sequence of still photos run at speed, isn’t it? The programme just picks up individual frames. And what do you think the computer told us when I ran the video of the tiger they put out on the news? Shall I run the clip again?’

Shao Wei-Lu clicked on the clip from Russia television’s evening news bulletin, which showed President Popov confronting a large tiger, rifle in hand. Then she tapped another key. ‘I’ve just activated the “analyse and identify” programme. Give it a few seconds and it will come up with the answer. This is a worldwide system. We use it for other wild tiger populations, the Royal Bengal tiger, for example, in India and Bangladesh. If the tiger is not already on the database, it will say so. But it is, isn’t it? Look. Here comes the answer.’

“Tiger, large male, approximately seven years old. Already in database since 18.08.2014 as Amur 127.”

‘So do you see why I’m puzzled?’ Shao Wei-Lu continued. ‘Do you see why I think there’s an anomaly here? That tiger wasn’t darted by President Popov. It’s been in the system since August 2014.’ She pressed another key. ‘We can see where that animal has been over the last three years. Right up to the time, a day or two ago, it swam across the Ussuri River and entered Chinese territory. So why did President Popov dart that particular animal, since it was already in the system?’

‘Maybe the Russians didn’t know the animal was already in the system? Surely that could be the explanation?’

‘It could be an explanation,’ Shao Wei-Lu conceded, ‘but I doubt it. Generally the rangers know their animals. They know which ones are already in the system. If they don’t know they usually have time to check. They’ve all got hand-held computers, not much bigger than your mobile phone. As long as they have some kind of a visual reference, they can check the database. Anyway, if President Popov had darted the tiger, we’d have a double signal, as the second micro-transmitter begins to function, but there’s no such signal. Instead, we see our tiger bound away from the site of the kill, as though he has been startled or surprised. He makes a rapid loop or two.’ She tapped the screen to indicate the tiger’s movements. ‘Then he quietens down and heads for the border, and a couple of days ago he swims across the river.’

‘Oh, my lord!’ Jang suddenly realized the full implication of what Shao was suggesting. ‘You mean Popov never darted the tiger at all? Maybe they realized that tiger had already been collared, so they let it go. Then why all the pictures on TV of the president with his rifle?’

Shao Wei-Lu thought long and hard before replying. She knew she was getting into deep water. Way above her pay-grade.

But she, as a loyal cadre, felt she had a duty to speak.

‘I don’t think Popov fired the dart at the tiger,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s not what the record shows.’