APPLE VALLEY, Minn. — A 12-year-old tiger has died at the Minnesota Zoo, officials said.
According to KMSP-TV, Putin, a male Amur tiger, died of heart failure Wednesday while undergoing “a routine medical procedure,” the zoo said in a news release Thursday.
“Despite heroic emergency efforts of veterinarians, animal health technicians and zookeepers, he did not survive,” the release said.
The tiger, which was born and named in the Czech Republic in 2009, arrived at the Minnesota Zoo in 2015 after spending six years in Denmark, the release said. His multiple offspring include a cub born five years ago at the Minnesota attraction, officials said.
“Today is an incredibly hard day for all of us at the Minnesota Zoo, and we will be mourning for quite some time,” the zoo’s director, John Frawley, said in a statement. “Our zoo has played a key role in global tiger conservation throughout our history, and we currently are co-leaders of the Tiger Conservation Campaign, which has raised millions of dollars for tiger conservation. While this loss is great, we can be proud of our efforts – past, present and future – to advance tiger conservation worldwide.”