Bulgaria counts itself among a lucky few European countries to be swarming with brown bears, but for approximately 1 year, they were under severe threat of being randomly shot if they strayed too close to settlements. The saga started in 2011, when the government announced plans to hand out 73 brown bear hunting permits per year. Shooting brown bears had been illegal ever since Bulgaria exited the crumbling Soviet Union back in 1991. The sole exception was extreme self defence, but in 2010, 1 man was killed and another severely injured by bears in the southern province of Smolyan. With 550 bears officially roaming Bulgaria (but possibly up to 800), this pushed the government into setting an official hunting quota of 3% of the brown bear population.

Unfortunately for the government, Bulgaria was now a member of the European Union, and in April 2012, bureaucrats from Brussels responded by launching legal action, pointing to their own 1992 Council Directive 92/43/EEC, which protected large wildlife fauna across all EU member states.

In November 2012, Bulgaria backed down, and hunting brown bears became illegal once more. Money talked, as the Bulgarian government was unwilling to pay the financial sanctions that the EU was about to impose. The system was failing anyway, as while 27 legal permits had been issued over the previous year, only 2 bears were killed legally, while poachers kept up their secret slaughter unabated. Some argued that the panic of local farmers had been exploited by MPs connected to the hunting lobby.

Sweden is normally portrayed as a civilised, orderly place, but the country’s great secret is that its vast wild interior is controlled by around 2800 brown bears.

This isn’t a story about a new law, but rather the effects of an old one. Sweden has always allowed limited numbers of brown bear hunts from mid-August to early October. From 2010 to 2014, a total of 300 bears were shot dead legally, but since 1992, shooting mother bears with cubs has been strictly illegal. This is a braindead simple way to protect the population, but little did politicians realise that they were pulling the levers of evolution in realtime.

Over the last 25 years, a clear trend has emerged in Sweden for brown bear mothers to care for their cubs for longer, simply because this gives them a “human shield ” which is advantageous for survival. From 2005 to 2015, single female bears were 4 times more likely to be shot by hunters, and the average mothering time has shot up from 1.5 years in 1992 to 2.5 years now. The percentage keeping their cubs beyond 1.5 years increased by 5.5%.

Mother bears are showing their craftiness – they’ve read the rulebook and are exploiting it to their advantage. With longer mothering periods, the reproduction rate of bears is also falling, but this has been compensated for by higher survival rates due to cubs receiving more motherly wisdom.

Aside from Russia, Romania has the highest number of brown bears in Europe, with 6000-8000 roaming the rugged mountain slopes and controlling access to hiking paths. Forget vampires – you’re far more likely to get your blood sucked by a bear in the deep, dark forests of Transylvania.

Starting in 2007, the Romanian government had given out annual hunting quotas. In 2016, 550 brown bears, 600 wolves and 500 lynx were allowed to be shot, via a loophole in the EU’s Habitats Directive which allowed large carnivores to be shot for damaging livestock. With the wink-wink nudge-nudge approval of the government, hunting companies across Romania would first submit their requested numbers of permits. This figure was for show only, a sky-high request which they knew would be ignored. The second figure was the real loophole-exploiter – it was the number of “problem bears”, whose killing the government had delegated to hunting companies as a compromise. With dozens of hunting companies in Romania, asking for 2 or 3 “problem bear” permits added up to hundreds per year, which were usually sold to rich foreigners for 10,000 euros.

By September 2016, cracks had finally appeared in this scheme, as the government decided to ban the trophy hunting of brown bears altogether. Revelations had just emerged that the brown bear population may have been overestimated, as in a shocking display of incompetence, individual paw prints had been registered multiple times in different regions, who each presented their own tally to conservationists.

By September 2017, things were changing again, as environment minister Gratiela Gavrilescu reversed course and allowed hunting to resume. Plans were announced for 140 brown bear shootings by the end of 2017, not to mention 97 grey wolf shootings. The government promised to create a Wildlife Emergency Service armed with tranquiliser guns to deter problem bears peacefully, but according to WWF Romania, this squad only existed on paper, which was why they lazily defaulted to shooting them.

Slamming bears soon became a popular tactic with national politicians for getting votes from angry farmers, such as the notoriously bear-hating Transylvanian MP Carlos Borboly. In September 2019, the Romanian senate announced plans for a bear hunting free-for-all. While hunting would still be restricted to the time periods of March 15th to May 15th and September 15th to December 31st, the annual bear quotas would be abolished for the next five years.

One section of the bill was particularly worrying – that in future, the annual hunting quota for a species should always equal or exceed its average annual growth rate. Because population data in Romania was scarce, this would be pure guesswork which could have led to accidental extinction by work of a civil servant’s pencil. Ultimately, people power saved the day, as WWF Romania launched a Save the Bears petition which was rapidly signed by 35,000 people. When the bill reached the Chamber of Deputies on December 11th, it was voted down.

Hunting bears is outlawed in the French Pyrenees. They wouldn’t survive long if it wasn’t, as the population numbers a fragile 60-70 across the wider Pyrenees mountain range, from a low of 3 in 1997. The police relentlessly pursue any farmers who dare to hunt bears, as illustrated by an incident in June 2020 when a 5 year old female was found dead and a $30,000 reward was offered for the killer’s capture.

Now things are tightening up further, as the French state council, the highest court in the land, ruled on February 8th 2021 that farmers were now banned from firing warning shots to scare bears away. Pyrenees authorities had dreamt up the scheme back in 2019 as a way for farmers to harmlessly protect their beehives and sheep. They gave it a trial run and reported decreased casualties, but the State Council now ruled that the loud piercing bangs were incompatible with the philosophy of maintaining bears in a natural environment.

The case was brought by angry animal rights groups who argued that bears could accidentally be shot. 2020 had been a bumper year for bears, as despite 3 being unlawfully killed, including a 6 year old male called Cacou who was mysteriously poisoned, 16 new cubs were born (although not all survived). The overall bear population jumped to an estimated 64 from 52 in 2019. This ruling was the latest chapter in the long-running “bear wars” between embattled farmers and the bear-loving, conservation-happy Paris government.

British Columbia is located in the west of Canada, although despite the name, King Charles has no control over it. The province is crawling with 15,000 grizzly bears and in December 2017, the government announced that the trophy hunting season for grizzly bears would be cancelled indefinitely. This followed an internet consultation where 78 of BC’s population voted in favour. First Nations peoples would still be allowed to hunt grizzly bears for spiritual and cultural reasons, but for other BC residents, grizzly hunting would be totally banned within the Great Bear Rainforest.

In the rest of BC, only hunting for meat would be allowed. It would be illegal to remove the trophy parts such as the head, claws and feet, which they knew was effectively the death knell given that few rich Americans would pay $10,000 simply to bring meat home. Tanners and taxidermists would now be required to notify the government of any bear body parts brought to them.

Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee praised the end “to this barbaric, blood sport hunt”, while hunters warned that more moose would now fall victim to grizzlies. Bear protectors responded by arguing that bear viewing brought 12 times more tourism to the great Bear Rainforest than bear hunting. The opposition Liberal party had a different angle: they argued that the laws were a clever distraction from the government’s recent approval of the controversial Site C Hydroelectric Dam.

As of 2024, the BC hunting ban still stands.

The frigid interior of Russia is so vast and untamed that to Moscow’s parliament, it probably feels like any laws they make are a drop in the ocean which nobody even registers. Nevertheless, 2011 saw a positive step for bear protection when the Russian parliament banned the hunting of sleeping bear mothers in their winter dens.

The sacred hunters’ codebook, the “rules of the hunt”, was now updated to restrict the hunting season to two time periods: April 1st to May 31st, and August 1st to November 30th. Anyone disobeying these restrictions would be punished with fines, and a possible trip to a remote Siberian penal colony.

Many hunters supported the move, as they saw no pride in marching into a sleeping bears’ hideout and shooting a defenceless animal. This had previously left waves of orphaned cubs who had struggled to survive without their mother’s wise teachings. It marked a resounding victory for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), whose 16 year campaign to end the winter den hunt had attracted 400,000 signatures in support. This time, both the Duma and Federation Council passed the law, which also made it illegal to hunt cubs under 1 year old and mothers with cubs under 1 year old. Both brown bears and Asian black bears were protected by these new laws.

While the gruesome frontiers of bear cruelty have retreated slightly in recent years, with dancing bears outlawed in Ukraine and Chinese bear bile farms steadily shutting down, the barbaric practise of bear baiting remains rampant in Russia. In order to train dogs for hunting, bears or foxes are tied to a tree with chains so that dogs can circle and bite them, often while a laughing crowd of villagers watches on.

Most of the bears are visibly panicking and unable to fight back. 200 of these bear baiting stations exist across Russia, and the bears’ teeth and claws are commonly removed by force. In December 2017, the Russian state duma (the lower parliament) passed a bill to outlaw the practise, with 408 deputies voting in favour, 2 against, and 3 abstaining. The bill proposed “contactless bating” instead, where chained bears would be separated from dogs by a mesh fence or glass plane.

Siberian hunters reacted with fury, claiming that their traditional way of life was under threat. Protests swelled in Moscow and St Petersburg, and the higher chamber of parliament rode to the rescue, voting down the bill in January 2018, which was only the second time since September 2016 that senators had contradicted the lower chamber. Ugly accusations flew of highly placed, wealthy hunters who were pulling the puppet strings.

Environmentalists claimed that Vladimir Putin supported them and that the president would personally intervene to save the bears he claimed to care about, but this never happened. As of 2024, bear baiting remains legal in Russia.

April 2017 saw angry headlines that President Trump, who was 2 months into his term at the time, had signed a bill designed to “kill bears and wolves”. The furore had its roots in June 2016 when the Alaskan Board of Game authorised a list of new and inventive hunting tactics, which the Obama government deemed to be barbaric and outlawed across the entire US. By February 2017, the Republicans had taken Washington, and Rep. Don Young of Alaska proposed a bill to repeal these restrictions.

This was swiftly approved by the House (225-193) and Senate (52-47) and signed into law by President Trump on April 3rd 2017. What were those “barbaric” hunting practises? These included chasing brown bears down and shooting them from aircrafts, trapping them with steel-jawed leghold traps and wire snares, and luring them in with food to shoot them at point blank range.

Once again, this sparked a massive debate. Opponents argued that the Republicans in Washington DC were helping their gun buddies from the NRA, which had supported the bill alongside the large hunting organisation Safari Club International. Supporters argued that the 2016 restrictions were an unconstitutional power grab, and that the Alaska state government would always know what was happening in its own backyard more accurately. Congressman Young argued that shooting bears and wolves from aircrafts was extremely difficult anyway and that the media had overhyped the story.

The bear laws of Yellowstone have been a rollercoaster ride over the last 15 years, with never-ending twists and turns. The most recent saga started in June 2017 when the US federal government announced the official delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly as a threatened species. After swelling from 136 in 1977 to 700 in 2017, individual states were finally allowed to hand out hunting permits again.

Idaho handed out none, Montana gave out 1 permit, but Wyoming jumped right in and handed out 22 permits. Outraged conservationists tried to buy up the permits themselves, and the outcry reached a fever pitch when one hunter promised to shot sow 101, the famous roadside mother bear, calling her the ultimate trophy.  “The grizzly population has more than recovered,” said Tex Janecek of Safari Club International.

In September 2018, bears lovers’ fears were soothed as a district court in Montana put a halt to the hunt. 2 suspenseful years passed, before the 9th circuit court declared that Yellowstone’s grizzlies were officially protected again. The initial delisting had been rushed, they argued, with insufficient evidence put forward that the grizzly bear population had stabilised. They warned that the isolated pocket of Yellowstone would never truly be safe until it linked up with Canada’s bears.

Weirdly, this entire cycle had happened 10 years earlier, beginning in 2005 and ending in 2013 when the delisting was again ruled as unconstitutional by a lower court. Yellowstone’s bears remain protected as of 2021.

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It’s a universal law of national parks. Yellowstone’s website clearly states “Never feed bears. Bears that become dependent on human food may become aggressive toward people and have to be killed“, while Grand Teton National Park in northwest Wyoming has a $5000 fine for feeding wildlife, and up to one year in jail.

There isn’t a single national park in the USA or Canada today that allows you to feed bears a peanut butter sandwich or Cheetos, but before World War 2, the exact opposite was true. Yellowstone would host nightly “bear shows”, where both brown and black bears would feed off a rubbish dump, while a ranger on a horse stood just 30 feet away and gave educational bear talks to enraptured viewers. A platform called the “lunch counter” became famous, where viewers could watch bears eat bacon rind from comfortable wooden platforms. A 1920 Yellowstone tourist brochure promised a full course dinner and numerous bear sightings within one hour.

By 1960, hungry bears were tactically positioning themselves in roads to block motorists, who would feed them twinkies and marshmallows. Rangers were getting uneasy, and 1970 was the turning point. Trout Creek dump closed, the last surviving garbage dump in Yellowstone, and bear proof bins were installed in the busier areas. The horrific Night of the Grizzlies in 1967 was the inspiration, when garbage-addicted bears killed two women. Consequently, all American national parks banned feeding at once.

This is part of the same no feeding philosophy. Bear canisters are also called bear-resistant food storage containers (BRFCs). The average container weighs 2-4 pounds and is constructed from tough polycarbon and ABS plastic. They’re normally black and in a tube shape, while the lid is difficult even for humans to unscrew, requiring fine motor skills far beyond the smartest bear (we think). They’re designed to prevent bears from eating human food, becoming addicted, and transforming overnight into “problem bears”, but unlike feeding bears, the rules vary by national park.

In Denali, BRFCs are “strongly recommended”. Anyone who successfully applies for a trekking permit will be handed a free one, which must be returned 48 hours after the trek is over.

Yellowstone, meanwhile, has more relaxed rules on whether BRFCs are necessary, but tough rules on the models; they only allow bear canisters approved by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee. To get committee approval, a bear canister has to survive one test: a night in a zoo with a captive black bear.

In Glacier National Park in Wyoming, bear canisters are “highly recommended”, but all food must be stashed 100 yards away from your campsite, and downwind to boot. If 100 yards downwind is in the empty space above a cliff, then it’s time to find a new campsite. Glacier Park hands out bear canisters for free at the Visitor Information Station, which are specially shaped to fit on a backpack or kayak.

The list of instructions for camping in bear country is very long. Some are pure common sense, such as never camping near a salmon river, no matter how blue and sparkling. Another is to never camp near fresh bear tracks or dig marks in the soil, and to establish camp before nightfall to allow a clear view of whether the area is grizzly central USA.

Most of Yellowstone’s more detailed instructions are about strong scents, and keeping them away from the powerful nostrils of grizzlies. Their website recommends keeping not just food under wraps, but strong smelling soaps, fuel, toothpaste, and suntan lotion. Backpacks containing the food should never be left unattended for more than a few minutes, while the food itself should never be cooked in the tent, or even with sleeping bags draped over people for warmth, in case the smell of food lingers.

Yellowstone recommends that all cooking takes place 100 yards (91 metres) away from the main camping site, and that campers change clothes once they’ve finished dinner – otherwise a bear will burst out of a nearby tree trunk within seconds. Yellowstone’s website advises you to “avoid bringing smelly foods into the backcountry” altogether.

Pepper spray for bears was laughed at in the 1970s, but today, it’s accepted as the best bear deterring tool available. Firstly, one reassuring fact Yellowstone offers is that “you don’t need to be a good shot“. Cans are designed to release a cloud of gas which the bear cannot run through without agonising stinging, provided by the hot pepper compound capsaicin. But the website does recommend serious practise. You need to learn to unscrew the top, press the button, and adjust for crosswind. You don’t need to be Clint Eastwood, sure, but you need to aim in vaguely the correct direction.

Speaking of the wild west, another recommendation is a must: keeping your canister in a quick draw holster, rather than a backpack. A bear won’t politely wait for a fair duel. Another common sense recommendation is checking the expiry date, but one which you wouldn’t expect is keeping your bear spray away from 120F heat. The reason: the cans have a tendency to explode! The natural pressure required for the gas propulsion is to blame.

Something which any ranger will tell you is to never use your bear spray like an insect repellent, spraying it around the campsite as a deterrent, because ironically, the aroma can actually attract bears. Despite arguments by some rangers, bear spray isn’t mandatory in Yellowstone, but it is mandatory on certain Canadian trails. In July 2011, Lake Minnewanka Trail near Banff promised a court appearance and a $25,000 fine to groups where at least one person wasn’t carrying.

If you’re worried about using bear spray then check out Yellowstone’s official guide.

Good news for firearm fanatics – it’s legal to carry a rifle in Yellowstone Park. But the bad news is that it’s illegal to fire it. Hunting is banned altogether in Yellowstone, let alone targeting an 800 pound grizzly bear. There are no national parks in North America where firearms are actively recommended for stopping bears, and in Canadian ones, they are banned outright.

Rucksacks are another important piece of equipment. Specifically, the Yellowstone website says to never remove them! It’s a solid barrier between a bear’s claws and the skin on your back, and could save your life. You should also “pick up small children immediately“, and “make yourself looks as large as possible” if a bear is sighted, possibly by moving to higher ground, or converging into a big huddle to resemble a strange-looking rival bear.

Good at impressions? Then never try to copy a bear’s noises. Yellowstone rangers say this is more likely to trigger an assault. Instead, the website recommends low tones at a consistent volume, to convince the bear that you’re not a threat.

Not everything is about fear and panic. Denali’s website has a section on how to find bears, such as scanning the horizon for strange anomalies that catch your eye, and looking further up the mountain during summer where they search for squirrels.

The main US National Park website even takes time to dispel the old myth that bears can’t run downhill: “Grizzlies can swim, run up and downhill, and sprint up to 40 miles per hour“. Apparently, this old wives tale is so pervasive that the government is forced to pay salaried workers to counter it!

Being the responsible park operator that it is, Yellowstone tells you how to avoid bears in the first place rather than dodge a 5000 pound grizzly already charging at you. Firstly, their website advises you to never travel by yourself, citing statistics that 91% of bear assaults happened to lone hikers. Groups of 3-4 are the optimal.

Visitors should also shout loudly at intervals, to alert the bear to their presence. If you can’t think of anything off the top of your head, then Yellowstone recommends the age-old “hey bear”. This is particularly important on windy days or by loud streams, which might muffle your natural talking – the goal is to alert the bear to your presence, to give it a chance to scamper. On the other hand, Yellowstone Park recommends strongly against bear bells, a popular piece of equipment. According to statistics, “they are generally not considered effective at preventing surprise encounters“, particularly in foul weather.

Avoiding night, dusk and dawn is another key, as “that’s when grizzly bears are most active“. They also recommend staying away from carcasses. Even if there’s no bear in sight, it could be lurking in the undergrowth, and the strong smell is sure to attract a bear eventually. They advise sticking to established trails – you might guess that bears would use these easy transport tunnels, but grizzlies know that they’re human turf.

The first step, according to Yellowstone’s website, is to not panic and run around screaming like a headless chicken. First of all, if it’s a distant bear, you should take a long detour downwind of the bear before it’s powerful nostrils suss out what’s up. Don’t panic if the bear stands on its hind legs, because “it’s probably trying to gather information about you rather than being aggressive“.

You’re advised to remember the difference in mannerisms between an aggressive bear and a mother protecting its cubs. A defensive bear will slap the ground with its paws, clack its teeth and stick out its lips, warning you to stay away. Here, you should back off slowly, and never turn around and run at high speeds. This will trigger the bear’s hunter instinct, and it’s impossible to outrun a bear with 4 working legs anyway. Yellowstone recommends against playing dead if a defensive bear is simply standing and watching you – backing off is the solution.

Meanwhile, the signs of a curious or predator bear tend to be a raised ears and head, rather than its head stooped. This bear won’t slap its paw, bark, hoof or use other threats. There will be a visible lack of panic in its mannerisms. In this case, most National Park websites advise you to scoop up your food and belongings, and yell loudly at the bear with your friends to deter it. According to Yellowstone, “it may retreat once it realizes you’re human“. This is the time to ready your bear spray canister.

The bear is now charging at high speeds. There’s no time to unlock your phone and type “help, a bear is attacking me” into google. Yellowstone’s attack advice still varies between a defensive bear and an aggressive one. With a mother defending cubs, they recommend keeping your spray on hand, but holding your nerve, because “the bear is likely to break off the charge or veer away“.

Most defensive bears are trying to scare you away. If the bear keeps charging, then this is when the old “play dead” strategy comes in. Because a protective mother bear sees you as a threat rather than food, she may give up after the first few swipes. The consistent recommendation is to lie on your stomach, with your hands on the back of your neck. Once the mother bear leaves, Yellowstone says to wait for several minutes before moving, because she could be gathering her cubs.

If you’re unlucky enough to encounter Swipey the Predator Bear, then Yellowstone is clear: “Fight back as if your life depends on it, because it does“. Firstly, aim carefully and unleash your bear spray canister, at the range of 20-30 feet. If the bear simply runs through the gas cloud, then don’t play dead, because this bear is hungry and will not give up. In fact, the lower the threat, the easier he’ll feel his lunch is. Use rocks, sticks, fists – any weapon available.

Back in 2015, a video went semi-viral of a bear trying to break into a car while a man and his family sat inside. At first, the man shouts “get in the car”, before spending 3 minutes sitting there while the curious looking grizzly presses its nose against their windscreen. Eventually, the grizzly calmly gives up and walks into the bushes.

Earlier in the video, the father says “if that grizzly wanted to, he’d be in here”, but according to Yellowstone park, he actually did everything right. US National Parks strongly recommend against getting out of cars if a bear is nearby. It sounds like common sense today, but in the 1940s and 50s, before the notorious night of the grizzlies happened in 1967, smiling rangers watched on while families gathered around “friendly” bears and fed them scraps of their picnic (video).

Noise is good according to Yellowstone: “If you honk your horn, then the bear reacts to that and will likely move away from the vehicle“.  This statement was a response to a May 2018 incident when a grizzly bear played with a car’s antenna. Yellowstone considers the sanctuary of a car to be safe, as bears won’t break through the glass unless they’re desperately hungry and a strong aroma of food is pulling them in.

That said, Yellowstone’s view on trees is exactly the opposite. Grizzly bear adults are inferior tree climbers to black bears, with their perfectly shaped wood-digging claws. Climbing a tree will work sometimes, like with George Favier in California in 1858, who watched his 4 friends be devoured at their campsite from the safety of a high branch. But the Yellowstone Park website is very clear: “In most cases, climbing a tree is a poor decision“.

A brown bear can easily climb trees if the desire is there, and if it’s a predatory bear, that desire could be you. Climbing a tree is smarter to avoid a defensive mother bear, but as Yellowstone points out, when was the last time you climbed a tree? It might be harder than you remember. The website warns of fatal foot grabbings: “People have been pulled from trees before they can get high enough to get away”.

The mere act of frantically climbing might trigger a brown bear’s hunter instinct. Denali National Park has similar views, stating in 2013 that 3 of 23 recent grizzly attacks involved a grizzly pulling someone out of a tree.  In August 2020, the National Park Service which overseas all 63 of them made their views clear on Facebook: “Do NOT climb a tree. Both grizzlies and black bears can climb trees.⁣⁣ Do NOT push down a slower friend (even if you think the friendship has run its course)“.

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The bear spray story started in the late 1970s, with a 7 year old male bear known as Growly who terrorised Montana State National Park for months. Nothing was off limits for this hyperactive bear, as he tore through fences, clawed apart cabins and spooked innocent visitors.

In 1977, Growly was scheduled for execution, but instead, he found himself in a small cement pit in the grounds of the University of Montana. Dr Gary Miller and his team wanted to discover precisely which sounds and sensations a grizzly bear was most spooked by, with the goal of saving human lives and grizzly bear lives in the wild.

Over the next 3 days, Growly was subjected to strobe lights, boat horns, piercing whistles, and firecrackers. All achieved pretty much nothing. The firecrackers and horns sent Growly scampering to the door, but only briefly. The boat horn only managed to stop him in midcharge. Growly even slept through the sound of bear bells, which are still sold to hikers as deterrents today.

As a last ditch hope, Miller sprayed Growly in the face with several irritating substances, including onion juice, windex, mustard, and a dog repellent called Halt. Bingo – the Halt spray caused Growly to flee to the opposite side of the chamber and rub his eyes in discomfort, and a second bear called Sandy reacted almost identically. It was 1977, and the first seeds of the bear spray industry had been planted.

In the early 1980s, a Montana university student called Carrie Hunt had her thesis due, and chose to study the all new field of bear spray. It was a wise choice: she and a mischievous bear biologist called Chuck Jonkel ended up being pivotal figures in creating the modern capsaicin recipe, and discovering the optimal ratios of ingredients. The first prototype wasn’t amazing: its stream was pencil thin, and the threatened hiker had to be within 6 feet of the charging bear.

By 1982 though, a Vietnam veteran called Bill Pounds had heard about Hunt’s studies, and suggested a megaphone-shaped funnel, to allow a wider distribution of gas in front of the charging bear. He also gave ideas for longer bear spray distance and duration, probably aided by his experiences in the war. Pounds went on to found Outdoor Assault, the very first bear spray company.

In 1989, Hunt and Jonkel contacted Chris Servheen, a national grizzly bear recovery co-ordinator, who was interested enough to commence official government research. Afterwards, the EPA laid down the first official regulations for bear spray, including a minimum spray distance of 25 feet, a minimum weight of 7.9 ounces or more, a short-cloud pattern of spray, and a spray distance of at least 6 feet.

Firstly, bear spray pros strongly recommend against storing the can in your backpack. When an angry mother bear is charging from the woods, convinced that you’re out to eat her cubs, unzipping and rummaging will feel like a 10 hour job. If you’re biking, then don’t be tempted by the water-bottle holder, in case you get separated from the bike.

The standard Counter Assault canister costs $65 and includes a belt holster, a training can to practise your aim with, and the 10.2 inch can itself. The Frontierman spray by Sabre costs $40, and includes a chest and belt holster. As you venture deeper and deeper into bear country, always make sure that the safety button is off, just like with a gun. In the Counter Assault and Sabre brands, this is a white button at the top.

Finally, we have the tricky part: the bear itself. The average bear spray travels 25 to 35 feet, so this is the happy zone for getting trigger happy. The recommended form is one hand on the can and one hand on the trigger. Don’t get tempted to try backflips! Style points won’t do you any good in bear country. Keep it simple – aim for the bear’s face, and don’t fire too early. Watch out for upward recoil.

As the bear dashes off in pain, make sure to leave the area, because sprayed bears have been known to return, even if they usually don’t. These are the tips from bear-spray professionals.

Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero are two of America’s most prominent bear experts, and in 2008 and 2012, they solidified the fledgling reputation of bear spray for good. Firstly, they examined 83 bear encounters in Alaska from 1985 to 2006, involving 156 people.

They found that 98% of hikers using bear spray escaped with no injuries, and that injuries among the rest were only minor. Red pepper spray thwarted 100% of polar bears, 98% of black bears, and 92% of brown bears. The only downside was that 11% of users suffered from irritation due to backdraft, and that the wind interfered with spray accuracy in 7% of cases. This study was performed in 2008 and made its way to global headlines.

Slowly, bear spray was edging out its great rival, the rifle, and in 2012, Smith and Herroro returned to compare the two weapons directly. 2% of hikers who unleashed their spray against a charging grizzly suffered injuries, compared to 44% of gun users. None of the bears targeted with bear spray died, while 61% of the rifle bears did. The problem, Smith and Herroro argued, was that bullet wounds simply enrage a bear so much that finishing it off becomes a necessity.

As of 2021, it is widely accepted that bear spray beats a gun, both for man’s survival and bear’s survival.

Over the last 5 years, nothing seems to have caused more chaos in Amazon warehouses than cans of bear repellent. In 2018, 54 employees in Robbinsville, New Jersey suddenly began choking and suffering from burning eyes and throats. 24 ended up in hospital, all of whom were released quickly.

In the hustle and bustle of the warehouse, clocking in at 1.3 million square feet and boasting 3000 employees, nobody knew quite what was happening. But the culprit was a loose can of bear repellent, which had contained the usual spicy capsaicin formula. The 8 ounce can had burst after being run over, having fallen off a shelf on the 3rd floor.

Taking a darker twist, the culprit in the bursting was a robot, part of the first generation of robots which Amazon hopes to replace much of their workforce with in the decades to come. Supposedly, at least 6 ambulances were dispatched to the scene.

Amazon issued a statement saying that the safety of their workforce is paramount, but look closely, and the bear spray rabbit hole goes deeper. That very same year, a cloud of loose bear spray had wafted towards warehouse workers in Indiana, who thankfully managed to dodge it. This time, an employee had simply dropped a can.

In 2015, the mayhem train pulled in at Texas, when the Haslet fire department was summoned to an Amazon warehouse. Once again, a robot had run over a loose can of bear repellent.

There are currently only 6 bear spray formulas approved for sale in the US, all of which use very similar formulas. Firstly, the sole pain-causing ingredient is the oleoresin of capsicum, a waxy compound that gives red hot chilli peppers their spice. Capsicum scores a 3.2 million to 3.6 million on the Scoville heat scale. It’s so hot that bear sprays may legally contain only 2% concentrations to avoid unnecessary cruelty. In human pepper sprays, which also use capsicum, the limit is 1.3%.

The next ingredient is simply an oil carrier to create a liquid, as capsicum is non-soluble in water. This is solely for practical spraying purposes.

Finally, there’s the propellant, which is nearly always R134a, the same chemical found in asthma inhalers. This boils the ingredients as they leave the can, atomising the liquid mixture into a cloud that fires through the air. The propellant is the reason why bear sprays always have a use-by-date of 4 years. No matter how tightly sealed the plastic nozzle is, the can will always lose pressure over time.

When a cloud of thick mixture strikes a bear’s face, the result is hot, fiery pain. The cap gets into the bear’s mucous membranes and removes its ability to see and smell properly. The grizzly’s fight or flight instinct swings sharply towards flight, and without thinking, the bear dashes off into the woods. The pain usually wears off after a couple of hours, with no lasting damage – the grizzly is as good as new.

While the average bear spray normally works perfectly in a life or death situation, they’re strangely fond of blowing up when not being used. The culprit is the propellant, the R135a chemical which transforms liquid into gas. During times of heat, this propellent just builds and builds. Even the Alaskan government recommends storing your can at temperatures of between 120F and -7F, unless you want a fiery explosion coming your way.

One time, somebody left a can of bear spray in their windshield on a hot day. The emergency services received a call, and after reaching the car, they found a 6 inch hole in the windshield surrounded by a neon orange coating.

In 2019, firefighters dashed heroically up to a house on Annie Street in Bozeman, after hearing reports of an explosion. The situation was that a guy had decided to cook his own can of bear spray. The result: it blew up, but miraculously, there were no flames. There was, however, a bitter smell of bear spray that wafted around the whole house. Nobody was injured, and the firefighters deployed the old fashioned tool of a fan to cleanse the house.

In 2016, a 9 ounce can randomly blew up in the Sunlight Sports store near Yellowstone. Worse, the gas was sucked into the ventilation shaft and distributed across the entire shop floor! The owners were forced to replace most of their stock, including clothes which were now the most painful to wear in America.

What happens if a bear already has you pinned down? Do you calmly reach into your pocket and deploy the spray while the bear’s teeth are enclosed around your head?

Unfortunately, most of us aren’t Clint Eastwood. Imagine staying calm and collected in such a situation, and then you have the tricky angles to consider. When pinned down, it’s physically impossible to manoeuvre the can, and that’s why the ADP company has invented an all-new bear spray product – a bear spray backpack. It’s exactly how it sounds, as when in trouble, you simply pull a lever coming from the shoulder section, causing a thick cloud of bear spray to unload as you wear it.

The product is designed for if a bear is mauling your back, perhaps after an attempt at playing dead went wrong. Another possibility is if a charging bear had knocked the main can from your hand and sent it flying out of reach. ADP calls their product the “bear attack pack”, and it currently retails for $125. Apparently, the backpack operates like an avalanche airbag, and is “back-up only”. It’s an attachment that fits onto normal rucksacks, and the ingredients of the formulation are identical to normal sprays, a yellow-tinged mixture of capsaicin.

In youtube videos, it looks kind of like a jetpack when in motion, except that it actually saves your life rather than sending you splattering into a skyscraper. This backpack would be a worthy winner of the “less stupid than it sounds” award.

Today, there are 4 major manufacturers of bear spray in the US, but UDAS undoubtedly has the greatest origin story. In September 1992, Mark Matheny and his friend Fred Bahnson ventured into Yellowstone park with bow and arrows, searching for an elk they’d shot the previous day.

Suddenly, Matheny spotted two bear cubs flying through the air. It was a strange sight, but Matheny had actually spooked the cubs’ mother, who had leapt upwards while the cubs were suckling, and was now charging Matheny at full speed. Before Matheny knew it, he was knocked to the forest floor, and sharp bear fangs were enclosing around his head. He could feel his face being torn, and assumed that his time on Earth was drawing to a close.

Fortunately, his friend Bahnson was carrying bear spray, which Matheny had meant to bring, but hadn’t really prioritised. Bahnson had even crafted a fancy homemade leather belt to keep the can within easy reach. He tried to spray the bear, but managed only milliseconds worth before being whacked down to ground himself.

Then the bear returned to Matheny, pouncing like a cat. It ripped at his arm, and sank its sharp teeth into his head. Suddenly, a bellowing scream went out, and this time, Bahnson sprayed the bear in its face with a full blast. The mother bear howled, and fled into the woods.

Matheny’s cheek was now hanging off his face like a flap. The bear’s tooth had been 1/8 of an inch from piercing his jugular vein. Thanks to the miracle of 15 inches worth of stitching, Matheny survived with only scars. yet the headaches lasted for 2 years, and his mind kept drifting back to the mauling, which had only last for 20 seconds.

Originally, Matheny had operated a booming construction company, but before long, he had followed his destiny and become the sales rep for a bear spray company. 5 years later, he was leading his own company UDAP.

Since bear spray entered the mainstream, new articles about life-saving encounters have appeared every few months, and 2018’s edition happened in Yellowstone National Park.

Sally Vera was the owner of a unique business, a “Bear Aware” kiosk which sold bear spray to hikers, but also had cans available for renting. In August 2018, she received a tearful email from a family whose names she kept secret, thanking her with all their hearts.

The family had been walking down a snowy trail to the south of Old Faithful geyser, when suddenly, an 800 pound grizzly bear charged from the vegetation like lightning. It struck their 10 year old son on the back, knocking him to the floor, and made the first couple of savage bites. In sheer terror, the boy’s mother and father unloaded a can of bear spray.

According to the email, the spray “worked immediately”. The agonised bear dropped the young boy, shook its head, and dashed off into the vegetation from whence it came. Apparently, the family had rented the bear spray, which Vera said was the cheaper, most popular option. They’d also watched a detailed training video which the Bear Aware kiosk had installed. The bear had at least 1 cub, according to park rangers, and the boy was recovering in hospital with an injured wrist and puncture wounds to his back.

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Today, there’s two main types of tracking which biologists use for bear collars – VHF and GPS. VHF stands for Very High Frequency and is also known as “radio tracking”. It’s a much older system than GPS, and when it first appeared in the 1960s, it revolutionised tracking technology. By 1979, one company claimed to have sold 17,900 VHF units. It was quickly employed for lions and sub-Saharan elephants alike, but one of the first test subjects in the 1960s was the grizzly bears of Yellowstone Park.

To reveal the bear’s position, these collars emit a pulsed radio signal which scientists pick up using a receiver, which can either be a static machine or a handheld radio, equipped with a directional or “bendy” antenna. The machine isn’t too dissimilar to a home radio. Sometimes, the term “telemetry” is used interchangeably with VHF, but telemetry refers to the actual process of data transmission by radio shortwaves. The radio tracking of bears involves telemetry, but radio tracking is the name of the overall operation. Sometimes, these collars are referred to as pulse collars.

The technology for VHF has advanced a long way over the years. Originally, the battery life was miniscule, but these days, it’s a full 3 years, thanks to advanced microprocessors which keep the collar on minimal power when not transmitting. The difference to GPS is that a VHF collar only transmits twice per week, making it less accurate, but more energy efficient.

With VHF tracking, it’s never as simple as slipping a collar on and waving one last goodbye to your animal friend. There’s complications with each animal, like polar bears, for example, who gain and lose so much weight every year that the VHF collar inevitably slips off. Grizzly bear necks don’t change much compared to polar bears, but instead, the problem is their brutal fighting style: their love of swiping at each other’s necks.

Consequently, manufacturers have gradually made VHF collars sturdier over the years. They’re now made from leather, braided nylon, or the synthetic materials of unbreakable dog collars, complimented by adjustable bolts and buckles.

The all-important battery is normally encapsulated in epoxy or resin, and the antenna is positioned between the two toughest layers of collar material, to prevent the bear from breaking it, usually while scratching its neck on a nearby tree stump. If the collar does have an external antenna, then it’s always located on the exact back of the bear’s neck.

The manufacturers also choose the materials carefully, to protect the antenna and batteries from the environment. A wild bear’s daily activities involving swimming through rivers, camping out in rainstorms, and enduring bitter cold. Then there’s the wide variety of add-ons. Some VHF collars have a pulse rate monitor, using similar technology to smartphones. This too can shut down during inactivity to save battery power, and only restart when a sensor detects that the bear is moving again.

All this is useless without actually acquiring the bear’s data, and with VHF radio tracking, there’s several methods of download. There’s the standard wait and receive method, but advanced VHF collars also have a “store on board” feature where information on the bear’s movements gradually accumulates inside the collar’s onboard microchip. When bear researchers get close enough for a signal, they can then download all the data at once.

Another option is to wait until the bear shakes its collar off, retrieve it, and then collect the data manually. Standing in the correct position is vital with VHF radios, as standing at higher altitudes massively improves the transmission. You also have to angle the antenna correctly, pointing diagonally towards the bear’s location – but that requires knowing where the bear is in the first place.

Park rangers in Yellowstone or Sweden require detailed training for all of this. To find the bear, on foot researchers use the “homing system”, where they pick up the transmission, before following the direction through the wilderness as the signal gradually gets stronger, and stopping abruptly once the bear is finally in sight. The other method is triangulation, where a researcher receives 3 signals, which he triangulates to calculate a rough location for the pursued bear. This is normally accurate to within 200 metres, but sometimes, biologists are forced to use only 2 bearings. The further away the bear, the larger the possible error – being within a few kilometres is a must.

As the years go on, VHF collars are becoming smaller and smaller. Just like computers or mobile phones, the technology inside the casing is shrinking to magnifying glass proportions. Originally, VHF collars could only be used on huge animals like bears, but now, they’re suitable for endangered ducks and birds. Some VHF collars are even implanted beneath the skin.

One of the coolest innovations is an anti-snare VHF collar. This is equipped with studded metal plates, so that if a bear or lion makes an unwise choice and sneaks under a jagged metal fence, there’s a massively increased chance of the barbed wires getting snagged on the bear’s collar and not its neck, saving it from the dreaded noose effect.

With the VHF collar relying on radio reception, it was only a matter of time before local bear enthusiasts cottoned on. And cotton on they did, as in 2016, Alberta and British Columbia reported a spate of people bringing telemetry receivers into the wilderness, to have a real life teddy bear encounter. This wasn’t what the scientists had in mind! The hikers acted all innocent, but these weren’t ordinary radios or walkie talkies – they were equipped with special high frequencies. Angry rangers argued that there was no logical reason for hikers to be carrying them. A $25,000 fine was imposed in Kooteney, Yoho and Banff national parks for carrying a telemetry receiver, under the crime of “wildlife harassment”.

The inbetween system, meanwhile, is the oft-forgotten satellite tracking. This is similar to VHF tracking in that the collar emits a signal containing the data, but instead of a world-weary conservationist travelling on foot with a receiver, this data transmits via a satellite. If a bear is fishing for salmon by the Brooks River of Alaska, then Dr Scienceborg will know about it from the comfort of his desk.

Each bear collar contains a platform transmitter terminal (PTT), which broadcasts a location every 90 seconds. This requires a powerful battery, which lasts for 3-12 months, or longer if scientists put it on a low power mode. A space-dwelling satellite orbits in the range of this collar roughly 8-12 minutes every day.

The flaw is that satellite tracking is less accurate than both VHF and GPS. One study found an average error in the estimated location of 480 meters. 90% were below 900 metres in error, but some were several kilometres away. At $3000-$4000 per PTT, satellite tracking is ten times more expensive than the average VHF collar, but without much added accuracy.

Satellite collars kicked off in the 1970s, and bear and elk were the first creatures to be tracked, but these days, it’s rarely used on bears – it’s more the domain of sea-based animals like loggerhead turtles, which are very difficult for scientists to get close to.

Although effective, the big flaw with VHS collars is that close proximity is a must, i.e. a scientist in the field or a plane flying overhead for several hours, searching in vain. If the scientists are in cars, then all they can do is drive down nearby roads in desperate hope of picking up a signal. They’re also restricted by snowy weather, rainy weather and potentially being mauled by a different bear. And when they do receive the data, there’s no precise location like with GPS collars, just skilled guesswork in a rough vicinity.

VHF collars aren’t exactly extinct as of 2022, but in the bear heartlands of Sweden, for example, only VHF collars were used until 2003, when GPS collars slowly began to replace them. Bear trackers in the Canadian rockies also began the switch to GPS collars in the early 2000s. A shift is happening slowly but surely.

GPS itself started as a US military project back in 1973, and in 1993, the final satellite was launched into space. Though both include high tech outer space machinery, GPS differs to traditional satellite tracking. Instead of a simple location transmission by satellite to the scientists’ offices, the satellites supply the raw locational data themselves by scanning the Earth. This data is stored in the collar for download, or broadcast to ready and waiting scientists. In total, the GPS network has 24 satellites.

With GPS collars, scientists can receive a marauding bear’s coordinates down to the exact meter. It works exactly like the unjustly pursued hero in every modern thriller who forgets to turn his smartphone off and gets tracked by FBI agents. Scientists can also be sent coordinates much more regularly, which they can set at predetermined time intervals, usually every hour.

The basic kit of a GPS collar is a GPS receiver and antenna, a VHF backup, and a battery power supply, and this battery is the first downside of a GPS. Normally, there’s barely any power drainage, but when the collar’s beacon attempts to connect with a satellite, the drainage goes into overdrive. This is why if a bear ventures into a heavily forested region, the GPS collar will die much more rapidly – it can sometimes take 200 minutes to connect with a satellite. This flaw is now spurring the next technological revolution, tracking collars which promise a connection time of only 10 seconds.

The first ever GPS location tracker was sold by Lotek Engineering back in 1994. They’re cheaper now, but at $3000-$4000, your average GPS bear collar is ten times more expensive than a traditional VHF collar. That’s ignoring the extra equipment like the data receiver, the accompanying software, a spare battery for $3500 – the price of tracking one bear can end up at $10,500. But ultimately, GPS collars usually save money compared to VHF, because they massively cut down on operational costs like a ranger’s wages or plane fuel.

When tracking brown bears or any wild animal, GPS collars have 3 main methods of data download. The data can either travel back to another satellite and to the scientists, through a long range radio and to the scientists, or it can be collected as store on board (SOB) data once the collar has dropped off. That brings us to another modern day technology – GPS collars with automatic drop offs. The first version unlocks after a set period of time, which the scientists cannot alter, only the manufacturer. After placing the collar on the tranquilised bear, a small magnet must be removed, which activates the countdown, which is commonly three years.

The second version is remote controlled. This time, removing the magnet activates the sensor, rather than the timer. It’s only close range – a scientist must be within 200 metres to press the button and release the collar. To find the bear, you have to use the collar’s VHF backup system.

GPS tracking has even helped to exonerate accused bears after the fact. When a mystery bear chased 209 sheep off a cliff in the Spanish Pyrenees in 2017, local troublemaker Goiat was blamed, but his GPS collar showed the innocent bear to be far away at the time. It also allowed Papillon the escape bear to roam the Italian alps for 9 months, this time because his kidnappers had foolishly delayed applying the collar. To be fair, he was only in custody for an hour before jumping the fence.

Never underestimate bears! No matter how technologically advanced a collar is, the smartest, wisest bears will always be capable of removing them. Case in point – Split Lip, the second most dominant bear in the Canadian ski town of Banff (with the most dominant being The Boss). In 2015, Split Lip was one of 13 local bears to be given GPS collars, to see if they visited the berry woods or strayed too close to hikers. Most importantly, over 10 bears have been killed on the railway tracks near Banff since 2000, and scientists were desperate to see why they spent so much time on them. On October 29th 2015, Split Lips’ collar was unusually static, and the local rangers later found it lying alone on Mystic Pass. All signs suggested that Split Lip had removed the collar himself by rubbing his back against a tree. They also found a cannibalised grizzly carcass nearby – maybe Split Lip was ashamed.

Sometimes, the more cumbersome VHF system leads to epic failures. In 1995, bear conservationists in Austria wanted to replace the radio collar of Djuro, a giant Slovenian male bear introduced one year earlier. They waited in the woods for 149 days and 149 nights, before finding that Djuro had shaken the collar off. In October 2015, Italian scientists managed to place a GPS collar on a male bear in Trentino, but because his neck was so thick relative to his head, it slipped off mere hours later.

It’s not comparable to the debate over farmed meat, but some call the bear collaring process cruel, or fundamentally against the concept of a pure and untouched wild. To collar bears, scientists lay a tube trap, like the tubes of a children’s playpark, with a piece of rotting roadkill inside. A hungry bear crawls inside, before a gate closes behind it and a warning goes out to rangers, who arrive with tranquiliser guns. Then the bear is weighed and measured, but may also have a tooth pulled to check its diet, while its eyes are sprayed to keep them moist.

The process lasts an hour, but some argue that it imposes a lasting trauma on the bear. Some point to figures showing that 16-20% of collared bears cause conflict with humans. Then there’s implanted GPS microchips, used on sub adult bears whose necks are still growing and would inevitably get strangled by a collar. Putting something under the skin horrifies many bear enthusiasts. More fundamentally, some believe in the magic of nature, and that collaring is an attempt by mankind to control everything it touches.

One of the most prevalent worries would be totally incomprehensible to a human from the 19th century – that illegal hunters could hack into a collar’s GPS coordinates to secure their kill! This almost happened in India back in 2013, when hunters tried to access an endangered Bengal tiger’s coordinates. Generally though, there’s no definitive evidence that collaring normal bears turns them into bloodthirsty monsters.

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Brown bears face poaching threats from numerous angles these days, but many are branches of the same tree: the never-ending wackiness of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Rhino tusks and South African lion bones are wildly popular remedies in China, and now, bear gall bladders are earning a killing.

These gall bladders contain bile, which is manufactured by the liver, and according to TCM, bear bile can treat over 100 bodily ailments, including epilepsy, muscle pain, bruises, sore throats, poisoning and much more. Bear bile is rich in a compound called ursodeoxycholic acid, but demand is now dangerously high, not just in China, but Thailand, Vietnam and Korea as well.

The skin, paws, claws and teeth are also highly demanded – bear paw stew is a cultural speciality in China, selling for $750 a bowl. Some Chinese companies have advertised bear shampoo, and before the march of vaccines in early 2021, the Chinese government was promoting bear bile as a coronavirus remedy.

China is notorious for its house of horror bear farms, where Asiatic black bears and endangered sun bears are kept in unimaginably tiny cages. 3 times a day, a large needle plunges into their body and drains their gall bladder. As you could imagine, brown bears are much harder to imprison (good on them), but in China, wild bear bile is often viewed as the “real deal”, more powerful than the farmed equivalent. Consequently, wild brown bears are a poacher’s picnic.

A large percentage of the poaching action takes place in one peninsula in eastern Russia – Kamchatka, a 300 mile long wildlife haven which is home to 29 active volcanoes and a unique subspecies called the Kamchatka brown bear. In the days of the Soviet Union, poaching was severely punished, and better, this was enforceable, because Kamchatka was a military operations hub which was off limits to normal civilians.

When communism collapsed in 1991, however, the economy plunged into chaos. When former soldiers returned home, with no prospect of work, they took up guns to feed their families. Even today, Kamchatka is far less developed than Moscow, riddled with grey Soviet-era tower blocks and poorly paved roads. When interviewed under anonymity, many Kamchatka poachers justify themselves with the same disproven line that only big-time poachers are a threat to bears. The problem is that these small timers add up to hundreds.

Today, 500-1500 brown bears are poached in Kamchatka annually, mainly to satisfy Asian markets. The WWF estimates that in spring 2007, 100 brown bears were poached in the South Kamchatka Sanctuary alone. Kamchatka is a no brainer for poachers because the vast landscape makes it easy to avoid their pursuers, who are normally underpaid park rangers without the expert training of Yellowstone Park or Katmai. The ultimate goal of poachers is to escape the park and slip across the Chinese border, or sell to middlemen who deal directly with gall bladder enthusiasts.

One tragedy took place in 2000, when a bear was radio-collared and released in Kamchatka. It was perfect – he would enjoy his freedom while providing scientists with months of bear data. Instead, he was killed after travelling just 40 miles, sliced open for his gallbladder.

Corruption is a big problem in Kamchatka. In September 1997, the famous bear enthusiast Charlie Russel (author of Grizzly Heart) rented a Kolb ultralight aircraft to fly over the South Kamchatka Sanctuary. On the snow-covered ground below, he quickly recognised the snowmobile tracks of poachers, before spotting a Soviet ATV vehicle in the distance. In a move some would call reckless, he flew closer and confronted 20 Russian hunters, but was shocked to find that Valery Golovin, director of the Sanctuary, was among them! Golovin pled insanity at his trial, blaming his presence on the longest blackout of all time. However, he was stripped of his post and fined $9.3 million. The poachers that day were carrying multiple sheep skins and bear skins.

Sometimes, the poachers do slip up. In 2007, two poachers were detained by WWF Russia in south Kamchatka, having brutally slain a mother bear and her three cubs. These villains were armed with three rifles and 85 bullets, and in their cargo were 12 bear paws, a bear skin with head and paws intact, and bear fat. Ranger Shurunov was particularly enraged, as he had watched the mother playing with her cubs just days earlier.

As of 2021, poaching has fallen slightly in Kamchatka, and sanctuary officials claim that ranger training has massively improved. But poachers are still being caught red handed across Russia. In December 2017, the police stopped a minibus attempting to cross the Russian border with China. Inside were 468 bear paws coming from at least 117 slaughtered brown bears, alongside 32 elk lips.

Had he cleared the border, the driver would have profited to the tune of $26,000. At first, he pretended that his cargo was meat, but failed to provide any documents.

This is only the smuggler that was caught. By June 2018, the FSB of Russia was calling for urgent protection for brown bears. Far from the image of Russian motorcyclists riding around St Petersburg with bears in their sidecars, bear numbers were plummeting rapidly, from 225,000 in 2015 to 143,000 in 2017. They argued that the species could be gone within 5 years – unthinkable for Russia. The FSB proposed a new 10 year jail sentence for smuggling bear body parts and a 12 year sentence for smuggling as part of a gang.

Officials from TransBaikal (the region directly north of China) reported that in 2016 and 2017, they had confiscated 189 bear paws, 54 bear claws, and 2kg worth of dried bear bile, mostly heading to the Chinese medicine market.

Naturally, with all the wildlife in Siberia, the poachers don’t just stick to bears. In the July and August breeding season, Kamchatka is estimated to host over a quarter of the world’s salmon, with 11 different species.

Like in Alaska, the salmon swim upstream to the mountainous riverbeds where they were first born, dodging the paws of hungry bears, and now, greedy poachers. Kamchatka has a regular fishing quota as well, but poachers far exceed this, particularly for caviar, which can sell for £20 a kilo.

Sometimes, poachers collect all the salmon they can with a giant net, before slicing them open, removing the eggs, and chucking hundreds of dead fish back into the river. Then they’ll salt the caviar, hide it in a tank in a prearranged forest location, and wait for a truck or helicopter to show up and remove the cargo.

Another favourite trick is to dig holes in the ice like a polar bear. The salmon poachers operate not as individuals, but professional gangs, complete with 4 by 4 jeeps, boats, and green fatigues. It’s estimated that a Kamchatka salmon poacher makes 10 times more money than a legal fishing employee. Politicians and police are said to be secretly in on the craze.

The problem for bears is simple: salmon is their trusted dietary staple. Without it, they may fail to fatten up for hibernation and die in their dens, or their cubs may not survive.

Just like Microsoft Windows and Apple’s formerly neverending stream of iTech, smugglers are pushing the envelope with their newest technology. In August 2015, some poachers were foiled after sticking 18 bear paws to the underside of a train! They were attempting to enter China, where they would peel them off the carriage after disembarking.

Whether they were caught wasn’t reported, but the attempt was no surprise to customs official Vyacheslav Tsyrempilov: “In the last three months… A total of 31 bear paws have been detained, with a total weight of 40 kilograms,”. It followed another railway episode back in June where 6 bear paws were found hidden in a timber carriage.

A couple of years earlier, two Russian men were detained near the Mongolian border on May 22nd 2013. Customs official Yang Xu noticed that the driver looked “intense and suspicious”, checking his watch repeatedly on the CCTV footage. He ordered an X-ray of the car, which revealed 213 brown bear paws stashed away in its tyres.

Fellow customs official Zhang Xiaohai told the media that bear paw smuggling had risen sharply since 2011, which wasn’t surprising given that the haul was worth an estimated $460,000. He was surprised at the catch because May wasn’t usually peak season for paw smuggling, due to the warmer weather which makes preservation harder. Later, it was speculated that the Russian smugglers would receive the death penalty, at which point the whole world started crying.

Away from Russia, one of the most heavily poached subspecies in the world is the Himalayan brown bear. It once numbered 10,000, but has now fallen to just a few 100 individuals in Pakistan, India, Nepal and China. According to the wildlife monitoring network TRAFFIC India, poaching is a massive culprit. The same superstitious beliefs about bear bile and paws persist, as do economic incentives to export to the bile-obsessed Chinese market.

For a while, rangers believed that the bear’s mountainous nature kept it far from civilisation, but professional poaching squads are now basing their operations at high altitudes. Typically, one Indian or Pakistani local will spend days in the wilderness scouting out the bear, before sending a coded message to the kill squad. Then the body parts will be passed to middlemen in local villages, who smuggle them into China.

In some places the Himalayan brown bear has recovered, such as Desoi National Park, which recovered from just 17 bears in 1993 to 54 bears in 2009. In 2014 though, the subspecies was officially placed in the critically endangered ICUN category. 2015 was a quiet year for Indian bear killings, but in 2016, authorities confiscated 9 shipments of gall bladders, followed by 9 in the first 5 months of 2017 alone. The poaching continues today, as in 2020, investigators were told by villagers in Skardu (a hub for passing K2 mountaineers) that bear bile medicines were often sold in nearby Pakistani villagers.

Grizzly poaching is almost non-existent in North America. The protected areas like Yellowstone Park and Katmai are just too well monitored, as are the customs posts. An organised gang with jeeps and boats would never survive more than a few weeks in Canada or Alaska.

Demand is still plentiful, as a survey in 2007 found that 50% of speciality Asian stores in Boston stocked bear bile medicines. However, most of these are from black bear poachings, not grizzlies, which exist in 40 of the American states. Occasionally, an organised gang will be shut down, including a “huge network” in Canada back in June 2018, which had exported hundreds of black bear gall bladders to China since 2015.

Grizzly poachings are occasionally reported, including a north Montana grizzly which was left dead by a roadside in October 2020. Its GPS collar was cut from its neck, a clear sign of a cover up, and 1 month later, a male grizzly was illegally slaughtered in Idaho. The authorities offered a 10,000 dollar reward for information, but overall, it’s estimated that only 8 grizzlies were killed in legitimate poaching incidents from 1983 to 2002.

The same can’t be said for America’s old enemy Iran though. Their native Syrian brown bear subspecies is seriously endangered, as the skins sell for a hefty $2000 in local marketplaces. With a crippled economy due to international sanctions, and livestock which bears commonly terrorise anyway, this is too much for impoverished villagers to resist. Population data is scare with this desert bear – there could be hundreds left, or only dozens.

The country of Bulgaria, south of Romania and directly north of Greece, is home to a healthy 500-700 brown bears, which belong to the Eurasian brown bear subspecies. They’re neatly divided into two populations, in the Balkan mountains of central Bulgaria (100-200 bears) and the Rhodopes mountains of Bulgaria’s south (300-500).

Compared to other European countries, poaching is a serious problem here. Back in 2009, a police patrol was lucky to stumble upon a bear ensnared in a poacher’s trap, near the Shipka pass of central Bulgaria. Thankfully, the two poachers were caught red-handed, and the bear was anaesthetised and released back into the wild. The poachers were caught with a Cherokee jeep, rifles, bullets, steel ropes, and a blue police light – these bad guys were professionals. It’s amazing that the police made it out alive.

2012 saw a similar incident, this time in the Rhodope Mountains. A young bear cub was caught in a painful poacher’s trap, and had to be freed under anaesthetic. Rangers watched from a safe distance while the cub reunited with its mother.

The situation is dire today. While Italy’s brown bears have swelled to 80 from only 40 in 2010, Bulgaria’s have halved. In 2020, it was estimated that 100 brown bears are killed per year. The poachers are aided in their evil quest by the abundance of old forest roads in Bulgaria, which make the bears easy to find, and easy to shoot from the comfort of vehicles.

Where would a bear article be without mentioning Timothy Treadwell? The famous Grizzly Man, who spent 13 summers in Alaska before being eaten in 2003, was constantly ranting about his mission to stop poachers: “it’s just the bears, the poachers, and me”. Supposedly, the poachers carried machine guns, and the lazy government anti-poaching squad only flew over the park twice per year in a distant helicopter.

The problem, according to rangers, was that poachers hadn’t been seen in Katmai National Park for 20 years. The poacher army was a figment of Treadwell’s increasingly bizarre imagination.

In one incident, Timothy Treadwell snapped a picture of a supposed poacher walking past a lake wielding a shotgun. However, this was actually his friend Joe Allen, a park ranger.

Patagonia Inc. printed thousands of fundraising brochures bearing the mislabelled photograph, before hastily destroying every copy when Katmai Park pilot Tom Walters rang up to explain. Treadwell was forced to apologise, saying that the picture was for visual effect only.

But in August 2004, just 11 months after his death, the unthinkable happened: 3 bears were found dead inside Katmai with their paws cut off. The authorities offered a $10,000 reward for information, mentioning that grizzly paws can sell at between $30 and $300 on the black market. Was Treadwell right all along? He always claimed that his mere presence deterred poachers, but elsewhere, he told tales of stumbling across bear poacher campsites, which is kind of contradictory. It’s all part of the Timothy Treadwell myth.

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