This #GlobalTigerDay we remember an Amur tiger called Morka. Although Morka died in 2003, she embodies the spirit behind the founding of WVI just months later.

Morka emerged unexpectedly from the deep forests of Primorsky Krai in the Russian Far East, wandered into the village of Pokrovka and sat down in the road, showing no apparent fear of people.

She was brought to tiger expert (and now Panthera Chief Scientist), Dr John Goodrich, who was working there at the time for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Although she appeared otherwise healthy, her eyes were vacant and she didn’t seem to respond to any kind of normal stimuli.

It wassoon obvious that she could be handled without anaesthesia – completely unheard of for a wild tiger. For five weeks John and his colleagues gave her intravenous fluids and spooned meat into her mouth. But all was in vain. She slowly wasted away and died.

What had brought Morka into the village and made her so sick? Although suspicions were raisedat the time, it was 2011 before genetic testing confirmed she’d been infected with Canine Distemper Virus (CDV).

WVI founder, Dr John Lewis, worked closely with the WCS team in the Russian Far East during the 2000s and beyond – overseeing the field anaesthesia and biomedical sampling of Amur tigers (and leopards) which were being captured in order to be collared – all of which helped lay the groundwork for the subsequent identification of CDV infection.

Exposure to the virus has more recently been found in wild tigers in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal, and it is now recognised as a significant threat to large carnivores globally. WVI has supported investigation into CDV for many years – not just in the Russian Far East but subsequently in Sumatra and now Nepal, where Dr Jess Bodgener is currently investigating the role it may play, alongside other health factors, in human-leopard conflict.

We remember Morka as one of its first known big cat victims, and as a symbol of the very real threat posed to some of the world’s rarest animals by wildlife disease. She represents the starting point for all of our work to support the health of big cats in the wild, from leaving behind a legacy of big cat expertise in the Russian Far East to our recent training of rangers working with jaguars involved in human-animal conflict in Belize.

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