Kazakhstan has taken a massive step towards its long-held goal of re-establishing the tiger in the country by releasing a female Amur tiger into the Ile-Balkhash Nature Reserve. “For the first time since the tiger disappeared from Kazakhstan more than 70 years ago, the first tiger has been released into its historical range. The extinct Caspian tiger, also called the Turanian tiger, was most closely related to the Siberian, or Amur, tiger, and so Russian collaboration was essential to the project. Though large, the reserve is not fenced, allowing tigers to spill out back into their ancestral environment as their populations grow. If the program succeeds, Kazakhstan will become the world’s first country to re-establish the tiger into an ecosystem it had disappeared from.