From Russia to America, Bears Advance, People Retreat

After a northern hemisphere summer of droughts and wildfires, bears in America, Japan and Russia clash increasingly with humans. As the gorging season begins before winter hibernation, bears in Russia have killed people camping, logging, mushroom foraging, and berry picking. Of the 20 people killed in Russia this year, the most notable was ice hockey coach Alexander Kuzmenko, father of NHL player Andrei Kuzmenko. He was mauled last week by a brown bear while on a fishing trip in Siberia. In Russia, demographics partly dictate the conflicts. Since the fall of communism in 1991, Russia’s bear population has more than doubled, to 307,000 today. At the same time, Russia’s rural population is aging and shrinking.“The situation is extremely tense,” Daria, a Siberian resident of Motygino, told the Krasnoyarsk news outlet 360.ru. “Bears are coming from various directions — several of them every day — and show absolutely no fear of people.” In Krasnoyarsk, a Siberian region slightly larger than Greenland, bears killed seven people in attacks this month.The demographic collapse is starker in Japan. There, the rural population has plummeted to 9.5 million, down from 28 million in 1990. Over the last 50 years, the number of licensed hunters in Japan has fallen in half. Most of the people taking out the licenses are men over 60 years of age — not the cohort interested in tracking bears.In response, Asiatic black bears are repopulating the mountainous interior areas of Japan’s main islands. Bears are moving into abandoned orchards, and then exploring half empty mountain villages. After bears attacked more than 230 people last year, killing 13, Japanese insurance companies started to offer ‘bear insurance.” In Colorado, where ‘living with bears’ is taught in schools, the number of sightings and ‘incidents’ has more than doubled this year. Through August, the total hit 8,672, compared to 3,680 during the first eight months of last year. So far this year, the numbers of bears relocated or ‘euthanized’ are triple the numbers of last year. Colorado Parks and Wildlife blames the upsurge on “the extraordinary drought and fire year.”Russians have long had a love-hate relationship with bears. For decades, Russians bridled at Western stereotypes of bears wandering Russian streets. Then, the Soviets appropriated a chubby brown bear, “Misha,” as the mascot of the 1980s Summer Olympics. Then, Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party adopted its emblem: the silhouette of a prowling polar bear. In last week’s Duma elections, the party won 59 percent of the seats.Perhaps due to this political symbolism, Russian authorities are uncharacteristically tolerant of bear misbehavior.“Encounters between brown bears and humans have always been recorded — for as long as people have lived near forests and the taiga,” Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry told state news agency TASS two weeks ago. The Ministry said perception has become worse than reality blaming videos of human-bear encounters that now spread across the Internet to be watched by millions. Drawing on its network of about 60 news bureaus in Russia, TASS reports that bears have appeared this year on village and city streets in 41 of Russia’s 83 regions. Climate change may be changing the bear balance. Russia’s northern permafrost is melting, winters are shorter and milder, and more cubs are surviving. At the same time, erratic weather has led to wildfires and smaller nut and berry harvests.On the human side, Russia’s wartime draft disproportionately hits rural Russia. Military-age men who might otherwise go out hunting are pulled into Mr. Putin’s war against Ukraine.

From Russia to America, Bears Advance, People Retreat

From Russia to America, Bears Advance, People Retreat

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