Lev Kaplanov’s landmark study, “The Tiger in the Sikhote-Alin,” was completed in 1941, and in it he recommended an immediate five-year moratorium on tiger hunting.§ That same year, Kaplanov’s colleague Yuri Salmin would go a step further: in a national magazine, he made an urgent plea for a total ban on tiger hunting in the Russian Far East. This was the first time in recorded history that anyone, anywhere, had made a public call for restraint with regard to the killing of these animals.
