MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/. The number of Amur tigers and Far Eastern leopards in Russia has increased significantly in recent years thanks to consistent funding from Russian organizations.

The country allocates sufficient funds for the protection of rare animal species, according to Sergey Ivanov and Konstantin Chuichenko, chairmen of the supervisory boards of the Far Eastern Leopards and the Amur Tiger autonomous non-profit organizations.

In an article published on Tuesday for the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Ivanov, also serving as the Russian president’s special envoy on environmental protection, ecological and transport issues, and Chuichenko, the head of the Ministry of Justice, underscored the growing numbers of tigers and leopards. According to them, since 2010, the population of tigers in Russia has increased from 390 to at least 750, and that of Far Eastern leopards from 30 to 130.

"Scientists believe that there is no longer a threat of extinction for these most beautiful and rare subspecies of leopard," Ivanov and Chuichenko noted.

In the article, they also criticized Russia’s World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which had previously claimed that rare animal conservation programs were underfunded.

"With such specific results, it is very odd to hear from other ostensibly environmental organizations that "millions and billions are needed" (without exact numbers), that it turns out there are no strategies for the conservation of rare predators. In the last three years, the WWF (which, by the way, is a Russian organization that bought the WWF franchise) has spent about 2-3 million rubles annually to help wildlife control agencies and administration of federal protected areas to protect Amur tigers in Primorsky Krai," the authors of the publication noted.