Why are bears approaching people more often? An expert's opinion.
В Krasnodar the village Krasnaya Polyana Last night, local residents spotted a mother bear with cubs. Eyewitness video опубликовал FunSochi Telegram channel. The footage shows three animals scurrying along the road before disappearing into the bushes.
Another bear noticed в Irkutsk Kerensk — just two hundred meters from residential buildings. The animal was drawn by the smell of a dead horse. After feeding, it left, reports the public page "Irkutsk No. 1."
Bears have become frequent guests for residents as well. Kuril Island Iturup - predators calmly come in in canteens, sniffing the thresholds of bathhouses, looking for food in cemeteries.
Zoologist Sergey Kolchin He identified the most common reasons why bears approach humans. Primarily, it's unsanitary conditions in the vicinity of populated areas.
— Food waste dumps, garbage heaps, garden plots with unharvested crops, improperly disposed of animal carcasses... In the second case, for example, the smell of a decomposing horse predictably attracted the bear cub.
People often deliberately feed bears, for example, near tourist campsites, which condemns the animals to death—these bears become beggars and lose their fear of humans.
Moreover, humans are actively developing bear habitats, and wildfires are destroying vast areas of forest. Thus, with the emergence of the resort Rosa Khutor near Krasnaya Polyana and Sochi National Park + The Caucasus The mountain forests most important for bears were taken over and developed into tourist infrastructure. This exacerbated the relationship between humans and bears. The animals, on the one hand, were left with less living space, and on the other, they were faced with more temptations, such as garbage dumps.
With the onset of autumn, bears may approach people even more frequently. According to Kolchin, this is due to their increasing need for high-calorie food before hibernation.
Video: FunSochi, Irkutsk No. 1, Sakh.online