There was a time when tigers ruled the river forests of Kazakhstan. They stalked wild boar through dense reed beds, hunted Bukhara deer along the Ili River and reigned as the apex predator across Central Asia. Then, within a few decades, they vanished.
After being hunted relentlessly, stripped of their habitat and left without enough prey, Kazakhstan's native Caspian tiger, also known as the Turan tiger, was declared extinct. Now, nearly 70 years after the country lost its last tiger, Kazakhstan has released its first tiger back into the wild, marking the start of one of the world's most ambitious wildlife restoration projects.
