Mild weather is making bears awake early from hibernation
Residents
warned to stay away from the animals, with two men already having
been savagely attacked... but there is happy news for two little
cubs.
Officials
in the Sakhalin Region say that bears are waking up early because of
recent rains and the warmer winter. Picture: Sergey Gorshkov
02
April 2015
Unusually
warm weather is prompting bears to awake from hibernation early with
warnings that they could attack people as they forage for food. A
number of sightings of the animals has been made in parts of Siberia
and the Far East in recent days, much earlier than normal.
In
the southern Siberian region of Tuva - where about 3,500 bears live -
two men were savagely attacked, suffering serious head and arm
injuries, with one of them losing an eye.
And
at the weekend the tracks of a mother bear and two cubs were found in
the Gorny Vozdukh ski resort near to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the Far
East. Game wardens are now talking about the possibility of having to
kill the animals if they do not move away from the slopes.
Officials
in the Sakhalin Region say that bears are waking up early because of
recent rains and the warmer winter.
On
March 11, hunters from the Teguldetsky district, in the Tomsk region,
shot the first bear of the year after it approached a dump near the
dining room of a timber plant.
Sergei
Bazykin, a local expert, said: 'Most likely, he was just hungry when
climbed into his den in the autumn or maybe someone scared it and he
awakened. When that happened, of course he needed food.'
Bears
in spring on Kamchatka pictured by brilliant wildlige photographers
Igor Shpilenok(top) and Sergey Gorshkov(bottom).
Two
weeks later military personnel responsible for the protection of the
closed city of Seversk, 15km north of Tomsk, noticed a bear and
called in hunters.
Also
in the Tomsk region, residents in the Kargasok district are being
asked to be careful and not let their children walk into the forest.
Anyone who sees a bear on the boundary of their village is also being
urged to notify hunters immediately.
Spring
bear hunting started in Tomsk on Saturday with the limit set on 311
bears.
Immediately
following their hibernation period bears are more dangerous than
normal because they are foraging for food. They tend not to wake up
until the first half of April but the mild winter has brought this
forward.
Meanwhile,
two bear cubs found alone in the forest in Yekaterinburg without any
sign of their mother have been rescued by a hunter and taken to a
circus.
The
man, believing that the bear’s parents had been killed, even spent
a few days feeding them with milk before he decided what to do with
them.
It
was only after he found out that Aleksandr Ivanov, a famous bear
handler, was on tour in the city’s circus that he handed the cubs
over to be looked after.
'They
are like little children. Most of the time they eat, sleep and
play.' Pictures: Natalia Kazantseva/Komsomolskaya Pravda
Mr
Ivanov said: 'They are two sisters and about two months old. Mostly
probably, their parents died because bears never leave their
offspring.
'Foresters
and hunters already know that if something bad happens, they should
call me. If the bear cubs were not brought to Yekaterinburg, they
would have died of hunger or would have been killed by predators.'
Each
of the cubs is 6kg and they are doing well and getting bigger and
stronger every day.
They
have been checked by vet and they have no health issues, and they are
eating milk porridge with vitamins. In time, they will also get to
eat fruit, fish and honey.
Natalia
Kazantseva, the circus press officer, said: 'They are like little
children. Most of the time they eat, sleep and play. They play
together with the children of the circus artists.'
Most
probably, the bears will take up a circus career. In the meantime the
circus has launched a campaign to find the best names for the cubs.
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