Two Siberian tigers which had been looked after at a refuge for big cats in the Netherlands have been taken to Kazakhstan where they will live on the Ili-Balkhash nature reserve as part of a World Wildlife Fund repopulation project.

Tigers became extinct in Kazakhstan some 70 years ago and there are currently only some 5,500 tigers living in the wild at present.

The WWF hopes that if the tigers breed successfully, there will be some 50 living in the region by 2035.

The tigers were taken from the Netherlands by plane and helicopter in special transport crates and are now being acclimatised pending their release into the reserve.

“It is a dream to be able to work with this project and bring back tigers to a country where they are supposed to live,” said Robert Kruijff, director of the Dutch charity Stichting Leeuw which had been looking after the big cats.

Bohdana is a 12-year-old female tiger who came to the Netherlands from a zoo in Germany 10 years ago. Kuma, the male, is nine and came from an Italian zoo. He has been in the Netherlands since 2017.

The WWF, Dutch foundation and the Kazakhstan authorities have been working on the project to bring back tigers for several years.

The reserve where the tigers will live is about the size of Gelderland and has been stocked with enough boar, deer and wild donkeys to ensure sufficient food, the AD reported.