Saving tigers was the last US aid project in Russia. Now that funding is in danger

Emblazoned on the dusky green background of a “Save Vanishing Species” stamp is an Amur tiger cub that stares at you with pleading yellow eyes. For exactly $17, you can purchase a sheet of 20 of these stamps from the United States Postal Service.

The stamps helped fund tiger conservation in Russia last year — the country’s sole remaining U.S.-funded aid project — but these funds have recently stopped.

The U.S. government has given aid, officially known as foreign assistance, to Russia since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This funding declined over the past 15 years yet continued in marginal amounts during the 2023 fiscal year.

Now, U.S. aid funding may have reached a turning point.

So how much aid has the U.S. sent to Russia? Why did aid funding continue even as the relationship between the two countries frayed?

And what does this have to do with tigers?

Amur tigers: A poster child for conservation

Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers, are one of the largest cats in the world. These tigers are a critically endangered subspecies found primarily in the Russian Far East but also in China and possibly North Korea.

For decades, Amur tiger populations were decimated by deforestation, trophy hunting and poaching. By the 1940s, experts estimated there were only 50 tigers left.

Conservationists took notice and, by the 1970s, began making concerted efforts to save the species. The fledgling effort received a boost when the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed an environmental cooperation treaty in 1972, paving the way for U.S. funding to support tiger conservation and other projects in the country.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) led the government’s Amur tiger conservation work. These programs included population surveys, infrastructure for nature reserves, training law enforcement, anti-poaching efforts, trail camera surveillance and educating locals, among other things.

Although ongoing, Amur tiger conservation has generally been successful. Recent estimates found there are between 265 and 486 tigers in the wild in Russia.

“In the scheme of international grants, the amount of money we’ve contributed to this effort has been relatively modest,” Fred Bagley, a USFWS officer who worked on Amur tiger conservation, said in 2007. “But there is no doubt that we’ve had an impact. This is one of those times when you can point to something and say, yes, we’re making a real difference.”

The USFWS is authorized to support the conservation of threatened animals — such as tigers, rhinoceroses, elephants, apes and turtles — around the world. Projects related to these animals are collectively bankrolled through the Multinational Species Conservation Fund.

The Multinational Species Conservation Fund is primarily funded through appropriations from Congress, but is also supported by the “Save Vanishing Species” stamp program.

The USFWS created the “Save Vanishing Species” stamp — with its featured Amur tiger cub — in 2011. For every $17 sheet of “Tiger Stamps” sold by USPS, a portion of the proceeds goes to the fund and, in turn, supports a variety of wildlife conservation projects worldwide.

By 2022, at least 60 million stamps had been sold, raising almost $7 million for the Multinational Species Conservation Fund. The stamps were reauthorized in 2022 for another batch of 40 million stamps.

The proceeds from “Tiger Stamps” went into the USFWS account that was the source of U.S. aid to Russia in 2023.

However, a spokesperson for the USFWS told McClatchy News that stamp revenue is no longer supporting this long-standing aid project. They declined to provide further comment.

How much aid does the U.S. send to Russia?

U.S. aid to Russia peaked in 2008 at $1.3 billion and has declined since, according to State Department data beginning in 2001.

“These assistance efforts, in the scheme of things, were not that large, especially relative to Russia’s size,” Max Bergmann, a former State Department official and expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told McClatchy News.

Last fiscal year, the U.S. funded one project in Russia: Amur tiger conservation. Just over $107,800 was promised for the project, but only $8,593 was actually sent. The funds went to the Wildlife Conservation Society, a nongovernmental organization.

A second project — $1.9 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for strengthening the global health supply chain in Russia — was promised but not sent. A State Department spokesperson told McClatchy News that the government decided those funds were no longer needed.

The State Department only tracks U.S. aid funding to Russia, and a spokesperson emphasized that the department has not provided any funds itself.

Public data for 2023 has only been partially reported, but the State Department did not identify any unreported programs when asked.

The amount of foreign assistance the U.S. sent to Russia in 2023 declined sharply from preceding years.

In 2022, U.S. aid to Russia totaled just over $3.12 million, with the bulk of the funds supporting the security of nuclear and other radioactive materials. In 2021, U.S. aid to Russia totaled just over $4.42 million, with the bulk of the funds supporting the same two energy projects.

A chart shows the total amount of aid funding the U.S. sent to Russia between the 2001 and 2023 fiscal years.

The decline in U.S. aid to Russia has generally mirrored the deteriorating relationship between the two countries. Aid funding continued even as the U.S. imposed stricter sanctions on Russia.

“Most people hear ‘sanctions’ and think they’re total,” Elizabeth Plantan, an expert on environmental activism in Russia, said. “Sanctions are not total. They’re targeted and very specific.”

“Alongside all of those targeted sanctions, there’s also very clear guidance from the U.S. government about specific licenses or carve outs for certain types of aid or financial transactions to continue,” Plantan said. Environmental programs fall into one of these exempted categories.

Simultaneously, “Russia has done a lot to curtail (U.S. aid funding) over the years,” Plantan told McClatchy News

In 2012, the Russian government passed a “Foreign Agents” law that required nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to identify themselves as “foreign agents” if they receive foreign funding and engage in “political activities,” a loosely defined term. Another law, the “Undesirable Organizations” law, was passed in 2015 and targeted international organizations by making it illegal for a select list of groups to work in Russia.

“Both of those laws have gotten used in wider ways since the start of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022,” Plantan said.

Laura Henry, an expert on environmental politics in Russia, told McClatchy News that “the Russian environmental movement has been hard hit by increasing repression by the Russian government.”

A narrowed chart shows the downward trend of U.S. aid after these two Russian laws took effect. In 2011, before either law passed, the U.S. sent just over $601 million in aid to Russia. By 2016, after both laws took effect, aid had plummeted to about $13.5 million.

Overall, experts consider the amount of U.S. aid sent to Russia over the past decade to be minimal.

Why does the U.S. give aid to Russia?

In general, “the U.S. government provides foreign assistance because it is strategically, economically, and morally imperative for the United States and vital to U.S. national security,” according to the State Department’s website.

When the U.S. first started giving aid to Russia in the 1990s, the funding “had two rationales,” Stephen Sestanovich, a retired ambassador to the former Soviet Union, told McClatchy News.

Foreign assistance was intended “to advance major security interests of the U.S.,” he said, “and to make it more likely that Russia could avoid lapsing back into dictatorship.”

After Vladimir Putin came to power in the 2000s, U.S. aid funding shifted to projects the Russian government was unlikely to fund itself, such as civil society organizations, and projects that both governments could agree were valuable, such as nuclear security and environmental conservation, Lisa Sundstrom, an expert on Russian civil society, told McClatchy News.

“There has been a gradual worsening of the relationship,” Bergmann, a former State Department official, said, “such that providing funding and support to the Russian people (and) the Russian economy was no longer in the cards.”

After the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Bergmann said the State Department took stock of all U.S. projects in Russia and decided whether each project was “in our interest to keep supporting.” A similar process likely took place in 2022, he said.

According to former ambassador Sestanovich, “the tiny amounts of assistance that are still in the U.S. budget don’t reflect Russia’s ability to trick us.”

“This isn’t charity,” Bergmann said. “Any money that’s flowing to Russia is not because we’re doing it out of the goodness of our hearts. It’s because we’ve made a cold, hard calculation that this is in our interest.”

“For tiger conservation, we’ve decided it’s in our national interest to support biodiversity and endangered species,” Bergmann said. “We’re willing to keep doing that because we’ve decided that’s in our overall foreign policy interests and the interests of humanity.”

As Plantan described it, “nature is transboundary. We’re all affected by these things no matter where they’re located within national borders.”

The USFWS expressed a similar sentiment in its mission statement, saying it works “with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.”

Will U.S. aid continue going to Russia?

If you flip over the Save Vanishing Species stamp sheet, you’ll see the gray outline of a leaping tiger alongside an ape pounding its chest and an elephant raising its trunk.

“By purchasing this stamp,” a small paragraph reads, “you are contributing funds that support efforts to create a future in which threatened animal species can once again thrive.”

But a spokesperson for the USFWS told McClatchy News that funds from the Save Vanishing Species stamps are no longer going to tiger conservation in Russia. The department did not explain why or when these funds stopped. The Tiger Stamp program itself, however, is ongoing.

When asked if any USFWS funds are still going to Russia, the department declined further comment.

The USFWS could continue funding Amur tiger conservation or other conservation projects in Russia through the non-stamp revenue in the Multinational Species Fund or other sources, but whether it will remains unclear.

If the U.S. ends all aid funding to Russia in the 2024 fiscal year, this would be a significant break in decades of U.S. foreign policy. The 2024 fiscal year is still ongoing, and aid funding for it has not yet been reported.

As it stands, the Russian government continues to discourage organizations, individuals and other entities from accepting foreign funding. Because of this, experts do not expect much demand among Russia-based organizations for U.S. aid funding.

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