Alaska's last tiger is put to sleep at age of 18

The zoo's last tiger, Al, is dead.

He was 18, which is old for a tiger in captivity, said zoo officials who euthanized him Friday under the care of a vet.

Al was the last of the zoo's Amur tigers, outliving his twin brother, Steve, by less than a year, and his mother, Martha, who died in 2001.

He'd been on the decline for some time, first stiffening joints, then failing organs, and finally refusing food, said Eileen Floyd, the zoo's development director.

"It was just time," she said.

When he came to the zoo in 1995, Al liked to put on a show, streaking through the tiger exhibit as if in pursuit of prey, batting around a ball, and gleefully crunching cardboard boxes with his powerful jaws. He seemed more interested in people than brother Steve, and the two battled for turf for a while before eventually making peace.

Al once escaped when vandals broke into the zoo with bolt cutters and released a bunch of animals, but he didn't make it far. A caretaker found him reclining on one of the zoo's service roads. He was tranquilized and returned to his den.

In their final years, Al and Steve were good companions, Floyd said. After Steve died in August, Al would sometimes make a special call for him in their cage, listening for his reply, she said.

The zoo plans to get another pair of Amur tigers, hopefully in the spring, she said. The zoo has three dens, and its chances of getting two or three young tigers are very good, according to zoo director Pat Lampi.

Amurs -- sometimes erroneously called Siberians -- are the largest tigers, with some males weighing as much as 800 pounds. They come from a cold, forested region on the border of China and Russia.

Only hundreds exist in the wild because farming and logging have chewed through their habitat, Floyd said. They must also compete with humans for food and have become a target for poachers, who kill and sell them in China and Korea where tiger parts are thought to have medicinal uses, according to www.amur.org.uk, a Web site devoted to the tigers.

Cats born in zoos help preserve the species. Al and Steve were born as part of the Amur Tiger Species Survival Plan at the Philadelphia Zoo, Floyd said.

Living in Anchorage seemed to agree with them. They are well suited for cold, with thick orange coats and wide furry paws. Twenty years is a very long life for a captive cat; 10 to 15 is normal. Martha lived to be 21, and Steve was 18 when he died.

"It's sad in the sense that a whole little family of tigers is gone now," Floyd said. "(But) they really outlived most of the other tigers. They had a good life here."

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.