The recent arrival of two captive Amur tigers in Kazakhstan's Ile-Balkhash Nature Reserve is a crucial step in an ambitious plan to return tigers to the country 70 years after the big cats went extinct in the region.

The cats, a male and female from an animal sanctuary in the Netherlands, were airlifted into the south-east corner of Kazakhstan last month and released into a semi-natural enclosure where it's hoped they will eventually breed, giving rise to a new generation of tigers in Central Asia that will be released into the wild.

Their new home, the Ile-Balkhash Nature Reserve, is a natural delta and wetland complex that stretches for 415,000 hectares along the Ile River. Once a stronghold for Caspian tigers – a subspecies last seen in Kazakhstan in 1948 and since declared extinct across its range – the area has suffered from decades of hunting, agricultural expansion and prey reduction. In an effort to restore the ecologically valuable landscape, the government of Kazakhstan with support from WWF and UNDPA, launched a plan in 2018 to put tigers back on Kazakhstan soil.

Amur tigers, the closest living relatives to the now-extinct Caspian subspecies, roam the icy montane forests of Russia's Far East and Northeast China and were unsurprisingly chosen as the best species suited to the task of repopulating Central Asia where temperatures can plummet to -4˚F (-20˚C). 

But reintroducing a keystone species – especially one with the kind of newsworthy clout afforded to the world's biggest cats – into new habitat is not without its challenges. Preparations for the tiger's return have been underway for some time. Prey species like Bukhara deer and Kulan (Asiatic wild ass) have already been reintroduced to the landscape and over 50 hectares of indigenous species of oleaster and willow have been planted to improve the quality of habitat for both tigers and their prey.

For the local Auyldastar community that calls the surroundings of the Ile-Balkhash Nature reserve home, the prospect of having wild tigers roaming the landscape is understandably unsettling, so partnerships were forged with community leaders to ensure that the rewilding process improves the quality of the ecosystem for everyone involved.

"With the launch of the tiger reintroduction program, we have witnessed a significant change - the revival of nature and our village of Karoi," Adilbaev Zhasar, the head of local community group explained in a press release. "This project not only restores lost ecosystems, but also fills us with pride in participating in a historic process."

There is still much work to be done with plans to reintroduce more captive tigers with a goal to build a healthy population of about 50 wild tigers by 2035.