Two Amur tigers are due to arrive in Kazakhstan by the end of this month in the first stage of a programme that will eventually see up to 40 of the highly endangered animals released into the wild.

Four more will arrive next year from Russia, with the rest coming by the end of 2026. This species, which is found along the Amur River in Eastern Siberia, is able to withstand the harsh Central Asian winters. It once flourished as far west as Iran and Turkey, but the last one in Kazakhstan was seen in 1948.

Tigers were a common motif on the clothes of Scythian warriors 2,500 years ago and are the subject of many Kazakh folk stories. The aim is to reintroduce them to the forests and reedbeds where the River Ili flows into Lake Balkash in the south-eastern Zhetysu region.