Russia's first state rehabilitation center for wild animals was opened near Ussuriysk

USSURIYSK, September 26 – RIA Novosti. Russia's first state center for the rehabilitation of wild animals, where Amur tigers and other animals, as well as birds, can undergo treatment and rehabilitation, has been opened near Ussuriysk, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports.

“We are opening the first rehabilitation center, which was created on behalf of President Vladimir Putin. Here, in Primorye, the largest group of Amur tigers lives, and it is natural that the first such center, which, I emphasize, is state-owned, is opening here,” said Konstantin Chuychenko, Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Amur Tiger Center, at the opening ceremony.

General Director of the Amur Tiger Center Sergei Aramilev noted at the opening that advanced technologies were used here.

“The center will have to be not only the first, but also be the one who will give our colleagues new rehabilitation methods. Now it accepts all types of animals, a heron, an owl, and a roe deer have already been released. I think that the center will fully meet the needs of the Primorsky Territory,” Aramilev said.

After the opening ceremony, an orphan tiger cub rescued in the Terneysky district of Primorye was released into one of the center’s enclosures from a transport cage. The graduation process was broadcast online on monitors in the administrative building of the center.

The rehabilitation center is located on an area of ​​65.5 hectares in the protected zone of the Ussuri Nature Reserve. As they told RIA Novosti at the Amur Tiger Center, this allows the animals to remain in the conditions of an untouched cedar-broad-leaved forest and guarantees the absence of anthropogenic presence: logging and capital construction are prohibited here. The center has four enclosures for adult Amur tigers and three enclosures for orphan tiger cubs.

“The enclosure can accommodate up to two tigers. Therefore, up to eight adult tigers per four enclosures,” the Amur Tiger Center told the agency.

Aramilev told reporters that the second stage of enclosures will be built. “Four more enclosures, also from 4 to 8 tigers. At its peak load, by the end of the year it will be able to comfortably accommodate 8 tigers and, if necessary, 16. I think the center will cope with its task for many years,” Aramilev said.

Separate enclosures have also been built for birds, small mammals and Himalayan bears. Each enclosure is equipped with video cameras, some of them thermal imaging.

The first stage of the wild animal rehabilitation center was opened in September 2025.

The center was built by the Amur Tiger Center together with the government of the Primorsky Territory as part of the instructions of Russian President Vladimir Putin to create a network of rehabilitation centers for injured and confiscated wild animals. The rehabilitation center will be transferred to the balance of the Primorsky Territory government.