The tiger was about to disappear. Then Putin’s grip.

In Russia’s coldest region, they have found tiger tracks for the first time in half a century.

Pilot Andrei Ivanov was on a reconnaissance in the forests of Yakutia in the first half of November. Ivanov, who works for the state forest administration, had a couple of days off, and then he took the dog on a hunt by the river Utsjur in the southeast of the region. One day the dog got tired of something and ran forward to smell it. Suddenly it raised its bristles and jumped away before it shot back with its tail between its legs, Ivanov tells Komsomolskaya Pravda.

It was animal tracks. Each of them was 15 cm long and 12 cm wide. Such traces have not been seen in this region for half a century.

The spores were from a Siberian tiger, the world’s largest feline. That this large feline roams so far north is good news for the endangered tiger.