The main goal of our research is to assess the applicability of various for accounting methods, to determine their limitations and to provide recommendations for their further use for assessing trends in tiger abundance and distribution. The paper analyzes the methodology for accounting for the Amur tiger and the interpretation of the primary material. The article points out the contradictions in the assessment of the number. It has been shown that, on the one hand, survival conditions deteriorate (felling intensifies, the number of the main prey species decreases), and on the other, an increase in the tiger population. Due to the death of most of the wild boar population due to the influence of African swine fever, many resistant groups of the Amur tiger will turn into separate scattered foci, and most foci may disappear. The basis for counting the number, as well as assessing the state of the tiger population, should be based on knowledge of the characteristics of the biology and the spatial and ethological structure of the population of the species. It is these tasks that the proposed express method solves, which makes it possible to identify the remaining foci (small territorial groupings). The proposed express method has a number of significant advantages. First, when using it, researchers are not dependent on the presence of snow and the season (the method can be used all year round, although the optimal seasons are autumn-winter-spring); secondly, this work is available to a small team of specialists; thirdly, the method does not require any special equipment, except for a GPS navigator. However, its main advantage is the elimination of subjectivity in assessing the presence and distribution of foci or reproductive nuclei, characteristic of the method of one-time registration, where the presence of a trace is taken as a unit of measurement.