Kamchatka 2008 blog

 

 

Thanks to the many people who have passed on the following story:

 

 

I'm not in a position to relate any first-hand facts, but this story has obviously been wildly exaggerated. Beneath the claims passed on by credulous Moscow correspondants there is nevertheless a serious story behind this.

 

Firstly, two people have been killed by bears, or more likely a single bear. This happens every year, mostly in in Russia and America, but is still an unusual occurrence. These events typically share some common features. They tend to take place near settlements, where bears have become habituated to human presence, and usually involve only a single bear that has turned 'bad'. Retribution from the local community is swift. The deaths are tragic but nonetheless unsurprising. Bears sniffing through domestic waste are typical of any village in the region and cause no alarm. We have them on the local tip outside Esso. Bears in the wilderness are generally wary of humans and are reluctant to approach camps.

 

As for thirty bears surrounding a remote field site, the claim is frankly ludicrous. Bears are solitary creatures, so this is no more likely than thirty hungry cats laying siege to an aviary. Besides, would a group of terrified workers really go out into the dense surrounding forests and count bears until they got to thirty? I'm sure they're scared to leave the camp, but this is an implausible scenario.

 

Finally, however, I'm glad to see the illegal industrial-scale poaching of salmon reported. This is a major problem in the region, but not a new one - it's been an issue here in Kamchatka for over a decade. Some rivers have been cleaned of almost all fish. The sad truth is that this is not the cause of starving bears this summer; it's been going on for some time, and the impact has more than likely already played itself out in bear populations at a regional scale, although it may still have local effects where new poaching operations open.

 

So, in short, please don't worry about our team - starving bears are not roaming the forests eating people. We are still wary of bears and taking all possible precautions to avoid them. I can't promise that we won't encounter bears as it's one of the major risks of working here, but I don't consider that risk to have got any worse.