Deadly bear attacks are rattling Russian Siberia. Why now?

By Arina Porkhovnik, CNN

(CNN) — When Sofa, 28, was sent a video of a bear in the yard of her former home in central Siberia, it made her sit up. The threat they posed had once seemed distant.

“We were never afraid to go outside, even at night,” she told CNN. A bear entering the yard was something she “couldn’t even imagine.”

The unexpected sighting comes at a time when bear attacks are on the rise, with at least 16 fatal encounters across Russia in September, according to a CNN tally of Russian media reports.

The country typically records 20 to 30 attacks on people annually, its Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment told state news agency TASS.

This year, bears ventured into populated areas in more than 40 Russian regions, TASS reported. But it is central Siberia’s huge Krasnoyarsk region that has seen the highest death toll, with seven people killed.

Last week, a bear fatally mauled a 51-year-old woman as she stepped out of her house there. Two days earlier, a security guard was killed in a bear attack at a truck parking lot in a forestry area. Earlier in September, two elderly women who had separately gone missing while out picking mushrooms were found dead, with injuries consistent with a bear attack.

Fatal encounters were also reported in other Siberian regions. In neighboring Tuva, the father of Russian NHL player Andrei Kuzmenko was killed at the end of September after being attacked by a bear during a fishing trip. He was taken to a hospital with serious facial injuries but died shortly afterward, according to TASS.

And in August, in the popular tourist spot of Altai, in southern Siberia, a bear tore open a tent and dragged a 29-year-old woman into the forest and killed her.

Why are bears coming closer to people?

Sergey Kolchin, a zoologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Far Eastern Branch who specializes in large carnivores, said attacks on average had not become more frequent, but there had been a shift in certain Siberian regions this year, particularly Krasnoyarsk.

Konstantin Tirronen, head of zoology at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Karelian Research Center, offered a slightly different assessment, saying attacks this year were above the annual average, though concentrated in specific regions.

Both linked the situation to an unusually poor autumn crop of pine nuts and berries. Kolchin also cited extensive wildfires that had deprived some bears of their habitat as a compounding effect.

“Trying to make up for food shortages, bears are increasingly venturing into areas used by people, where encounters are inevitable,” he told CNN.

Tirronen added that bears intensify their search for food as they build up fat reserves for winter hibernation. “If there is little food in the wild, they will look for it anywhere they can,” he explained.

He also suggested that accessible food waste and the expansion of extractive industries into previously remote wildlife habitats were factors bringing bears and people into closer contact.

“We are creating attractive food sources that draw them in,” Tirronen said. “The responsibility here lies with people, not with bears.”

Dmitry Sergeev, a natural resources official in Khakassia, in southern Siberia, called the rise “abnormal.”

“The bear population is above normal levels. Stronger animals are displacing weaker ones. There is not enough room for them, so they are moving closer to people,” he told Russian pro-Kremlin broadcaster REN TV.

But both experts CNN spoke with cautioned against linking increased attacks to a growing bear population, citing a lack of reliable population estimates. Bears’ solitary nature and winter hibernation make them difficult to count, Tirronen explained.

Can culling solve the problem?

Over the past two months, authorities in at least 10 regions across Siberia and the Russian Far East have issued warnings to residents over increased bear activity.

Nighttime curfews were also imposed in parts of Altai and in Baikalsk, in the Irkutsk region. Meanwhile, officials in Krasnoyarsk have closed the Krasnoyarsk Pillars National Park and the Torgashinsky Ridge Staircase, a popular hiking route.

Regional authorities have also deployed mobile hunting teams and offered cash rewards for killing bears. In the Krasnoyarsk region, where most of the fatal attacks have occurred, rewards of more than 35,000 roubles (around $420) were announced.

Altai’s natural resources ministry said more than 50 bears were killed following the tourist’s death in August, with permits issued to cull another 157. Krasnoyarsk’s natural resources ministry said earlier this month that more than 180 “potentially problematic animals” had been killed.

Killing aggressive bears in populated areas is a necessary emergency measure, Kolchin said. But a more widespread cull would not reduce incidents in the long term, he argued, because it fails to address their root cause: unsecured food waste.

“Other bears will take the place of those killed near rubbish dumps,” he said. “Widespread, indiscriminate shooting of bears amid the current hysteria will leave wounded animals that can be deadly.”

According to Kolchin, wounded bears struggle to survive in the wild and are more likely to attack people in self-defense. Animals that associate their injuries with humans, he said, can also become more aggressive toward people.

Instead, he said, the solution lies in keeping waste out of reach, teaching people how to behave around wildlife and using deterrents such as electric fencing to avoid encounters in the future.

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