Polly Anna Pickering

Pollyanna with one of the canvases inspired by her expedition into Russia during an exhibition at Sandbeck Park hosted by the Earl of Scarborough (below left)

Other expeditions :

Bhutan

Expedition to Siberia

In 2005 Pollyanna travelled to the snowbound wastelands of he Russian Far East where she braved temperatures as low as -60 to paint Amur Tigers.

Pollyanna worked alongside scientists from the Siberian Tiger Project radio tracking this beautiful species - the world's largest tiger - which has been brought back from the very brink of extinction. In the 1940's only 30 remained in the wild. After a gruelling four day journey to reach the reserve in the inaccessible Sikhote Alin Mountains, Pollyanna lived in a log cabin in the forests, without running water or electricity. Here she had to walk out across the surface of a frozen river each evening to fill buckets of water through a hole in the ice - but all the hardships were worth it to get a sighting of a wild tiger. Pollyanna was also able to sketch a family of tiger cubs at a wildlife research station.

A crisis is still looming in the Russian Far East, very close to the area visited by Pollyanna earlier this year. Plans to build the world's longest oil pipeline threaten the rarest cat on earth - the pipeline would run through a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve ' Kedrovaya Pad' which is home to a quarter of Russia's threatened species, including Siberian Tigers, and the Amur Leopard, of which only 30 remain in the wild. Ecologists have said that it would be impossible to select a site which would do more damage to the environment in terms of habitat damage and pollution. We implore you to write to :

His Excellency Mr Grigory B. Karasin, Ambassador of the Russian Federation, Embassy of the Russian Federation, 13 Kensington palace Gardens, London W8 4QX and

UNESCO Moscow Office, Bolshoi Levshinky per., 15/28, Bld 2, 119034 Moscow, Russia.