Wildlife Alliance's local independent Russian partner, the Phoenix Fund, cooperates closely with foreign environmental organizations, local authorities, environmental NGOs, scientists, educational institutions, and the public to protect wildlife and halt the illegal trade through a series of enforcement and community-based initiatives. These include:

• Strengthening anti-poaching and habitat protection activities in tiger and leopard habitat by carrying out joint patrols consisting of state law enforcement officers and public environmental investigation teams;
• Investigating and resolving conflict tiger cases;
• Subsidizing compensation schemes for farmers who lose livestock to leopards and tigers.
• In addition, Phoenix maintains an active presence in schools, eco-centers, communities and the media with education and outreach programs, publications and festivals – helping to create more stable community support for the conservation of endangered species.

Wildlife Alliance and Phoenix Fund have a history of collaboration that extends back to the early days of post-Soviet Russia:

• With the opening of Russia's borders and dissolution of the Soviet Union's nature conservation system in the early 1990's, poaching and illegal trade of wildlife products reached critical levels. In just a few years, Amur (Siberian) tiger and Far Eastern (Amur) leopard populations were devastated to near extinction.
  
• More than 100 tigers were poached in the Russian Far East during the winter of 1993-1994, creating an outcry among the world's conservation leaders.
  
• WildAid, now operating as Wildlife Alliance, worked with Sergei Bereznuk, in partnership with the Russian government and with the support of other NGOs, to create "Inspection Tiger" to protect tiger and leopard habitats, train and equip law enforcement officials, and stop the illegal trade. The Inspection Tiger project became the only barrier to stop rampant poaching and destruction of precious natural resources, and resulted in the creation of the Phoenix Fund as an independent Russian conservation organization.
  
• WildAid, now operating as Wildlife Alliance, has worked with Phoenix Fund to provide financial support, training, and communications and outreach to American donor audiences. Wildlife Alliance is pleased that Phoenix Fund has become recognized as one of the most successful conservation groups operating in the Russian Far East, and has built extensive partnership relationships in North America, Europe, and elsewhere to support its conservation goals.

Phoenix Fund's greatest successes have been in reducing tiger and leopard poaching. The number of tigers killed each year has dropped from an estimated 60 to 70 in the middle 1990s to 20 to 25 today. Total populations of tigers have increased as a result. A 1994 survey found 250 to 300 tigers in Russia's Primorsky Krai region; the 2005 tiger census revealed numbers have crept back up to between 431 and 529, due to the dedication of the men on the ground, increasing local support, and funding from international partners. But official data also reveals that in 2006 in the key habitat areas of Primorsky and Khabarovsky regions, five tigers were killed by poachers, 44 conflict tiger cases were investigated and one tiger cub died of exhaustion. Since the beginning of 2006 five dead tigers have been discovered and two tiger cubs rescued.

Despite rising tiger populations, challenges and upsets remain. In 2007, Inspection tiger teams investigated 50 conflict tiger cases. In one incident, a tiger was knocked down by a bus. In other cases, two tiger cubs and one tiger were found dead, and four tiger cubs were rescued and moved to zoos for rehabilitation. Since the beginning of 2008, four tigers were found dead and one tiger cub was rescued and transported to the Utyos rehabilitation center. The cub is scheduled for release into the wild in spring 2009.