A 51-year-old woman has been fatally mauled by a bear in her garden in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, the seventh person killed by a bear there in September, according to state investigators.
The attack took place in the village of Voznesenka after the woman saw a bear trying to enter a pen where she kept domestic animals. TASS reported that the bear lunged at her and was then shot dead by a neighbour.
Investigators released video showing them walking through a wooded area and examining the corpse of the brown bear. They said a criminal case had been opened into the local environment ministry, accusing it of negligence that contributed to the deaths of six people in the region and, following the latest attack, seven in September.
The investigators said the ministry and other authorised agencies were responsible for monitoring and controlling the bear population and for acting promptly when people’s lives were at risk. They also said officials had failed to take measures to regulate the predator population and prevent bears from entering areas inhabited by people, despite numerous warnings of danger.
“Monitoring data show that the brown bear population in the Krasnoyarsk region has increased 2.5-fold, reaching over 26,000 animals,” investigators said. Residents had submitted more than 120 reports of brown bears entering settlements in more than 15 districts, as well as the cities of Krasnoyarsk, Zheleznogorsk and Zelenogorsk, they said.
Krasnoyarsk is home to nearly 27,000 of Russia’s 308,000 brown bears, according to environment ministry data cited in the report. The region lies about 3,000 kilometres east of Moscow.
Investigators warned residents to avoid forests and postpone mushroom- and berry-picking trips, a popular pastime in Russia. “If you encounter a large predator, you have virtually no chance of survival,” they said.
The other people killed by bears in Krasnoyarsk region this month include a 39-year-old logger and two women who had gone into the forest to pick mushrooms. In neighbouring Irkutsk region, a pensioner who was mushroom picking was killed, as were two men gathering wild plants.
The attacks have formed part of a wider series of reported bear encounters across Russia. Experts cited in Russian media said bears had been forced to search farther for food because an early and dry spring had reduced the availability of berries. They also blamed people for leaving food waste in the open and ignoring safety rules. In at least one region, authorities have been accused of failing to keep bear numbers under control.
The report said that bears had attacked people in at least 11 Russian regions this year and killed at least 20 people. It also cited shorter and milder winters as one of several factors associated with the more than doubling of bear numbers, from 130,000 in 1990.
One of the most prominent attacks occurred in the Altai region in August, when a bear entered a tent occupied by two tourists. It dragged a 29-year-old woman from the tent, killed her and buried her in the forest.
In the Siberian republic of Tuva, ice hockey coach Alexander Kuzmenko, the father of NHL player Andrei Kuzmenko, was killed by a bear while on a fishing trip this week.
The environment ministry has disputed the suggestion that the current reports represent an unprecedented national surge. It told RBC that around 20 to 30 bear attacks have been recorded annually in recent years, while the only abnormal spike was in 2014, when there were 166 cases.
The ministry said the widespread impression of an unusually severe problem could be linked to the fact that more people now have smartphones and that information spreads rapidly through the internet and social media.
The differing assessments leave the scale and causes of the current wave contested. Investigators in Krasnoyarsk have focused on alleged failures by regional authorities, while experts cited in Russian media have pointed to food shortages, human behaviour and changing winters. The environment ministry has maintained that the number of reported attacks does not necessarily show an abnormal national increase.
