Stories by Jonathan C. Slaght

Part territorial call, part pair bond affirmation, their cries break the silence of a frozen Siberian landscape

Spring was always the annual end point for my work studying owls in Russia. This year the coronavirus ensured that the expedition would leave me behind

They are highly secretive animals: stocky, goatlike creatures about the size of German shepherds

Things had gone from one dead tiger to one live tiger, to one live tiger and one dead bear, all in the span of about 45 minutes

Efforts to keep spoon-billed sandpipers from the yawning void of extinction have been nothing short of Herculean

Sometimes your truck makes it across the frozen river, and sometimes it doesn't

A tigress named Zolushka helps establish a blueprint for the restoration of her species across Asia

The last thing you want to find in your mattress is a nest of wasps

A retired Russian biologist tells the tale of a long-ago encounter with a wild canine

What happens when last-minute invitation to give a talk at a conference arrives when you're deep in the wilderness

To get vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis, I need to leave the forest

In the more remote corners of Primorye Province, I am vulnerable to the whims of the road and dependent on the kindness of strangers

I feel the presence of the pioneering Russian topographer Vladimir Arsenyev everywhere I go in Primorye

A Scottish veterinarian recounts an uncomfortably close encounter with a very big cat

A wounded bird survives a broken wing—and then survives the well-meaning ministrations of humans

I'm convinced one was watching us from the cover of fallen log and concealing branch as we hiked

No matter how prepared I think I am, nature will find a way to knock me down a peg

For a hunter living in a small coastal village, a horrific flood was just business as usual

A conservation biologist goes on the prowl looking for owls, tigers and other creatures