Susanna Riva In recent months, Russia has recorded a series of fatal brown bear attacks , resulting in at least twenty-two deaths since this spring. The incidents have occurred in eastern regions such as Kamchatka and the vastness of Siberia, where wildlife appears to be increasingly moving closer to populated areas.
Authorities have described the situation as a crisis of coexistence between humans and predators, attributing the increase in incidents to environmental changes and negligent human behavior.
Fatal brown bear attacks reported in Kamchatka and Siberia
This week, a twenty-three-year-old man was killed by a bear while picking berries in the woods of Kamchatka, a remote area of the Arctic Circle.
The previous week, a fifty-one-year-old woman was killed by a predator in her home in Voznesenka, Krasnoyarsk Region, where the animal attempted to enter a livestock enclosure. The victim's neighbor had to kill the bear in self-defense. During the same period, other deaths were recorded: a thirty-nine-year-old lumberjack in Krasnoyarsk and two mushroom pickers in the same region, as well as deaths in Irkutsk and Altai related to bear encounters while hiking or camping.
Environmental and behavioral factors underlying the crisis
Experts indicate that the combination of a dry and early spring has drastically reduced the availability of berries, a primary food source for bears. At the same time, widespread human negligence —from the lack of food waste containers to failure to comply with safety guidelines—is attracting predators to villages. The number of brown bears has more than doubled in the last three decades, exceeding 308,000, an increase favored by milder and shorter winters.
The countermeasures proposed by the Russian government
Faced with these developments, the government has announced the launch of a package of priority measures to contain the bear population. Proposals include increasing hunting quotas for licensed hunters, establishing regional survival limits, and strengthening the powers of local authorities to manage predator populations. Furthermore, areas requiring additional funding to implement monitoring and rapid response programs will be identified.
Concrete actions in Krasnoyarsk and other regions
In Krasnoyarsk, home to nearly 27,000 bears according to the Environment Ministry, investigators have opened a criminal case against the local ministry, accusing it of negligence for the seven deaths that occurred in September. Authorities have also issued warnings to residents, urging them to avoid the forests when picking mushrooms and berries, as an encounter with a large predator would drastically reduce their chances of survival. The Federal Environment Ministry, while maintaining that between 20 and 30 attacks have been recorded annually in recent years, acknowledges that the dissemination of videos and news on social media is making these incidents more visible, creating the impression of an unprecedented spike.