Russia’s 30% bear-cull announcement leaves safety unproven

The Ministry of Natural Resources said on November 13, 2026, that regulatory changes had been prepared and registered with the Justice Ministry. It presented the regional maximum as a way to control bear numbers and protect people. But registration does not establish when the changes take effect, and the available reporting does not settle exactly what regions must do next.⁠2

The human toll is serious enough without inflating it. The ministry’s three incident measures describe different things: reports of bears approaching people, attacks, and people killed. More than 12,000 approach reports do not mean more than 12,000 attacks. Nor are the 36 deaths a single-day toll; they cover the year to the November announcement, with no more precise cutoff supplied.⁠2⁠18

These are government figures carried by news outlets, not independently audited incident totals. The same qualification applies to the ministry’s estimate of nearly 308,000 brown bears across Russia. A national population estimate cannot, on its own, tell a resident how dangerous the area around a particular settlement has become.⁠18

The clearest indication of the policy’s potential scale comes from three regional examples supplied by the ministry. They show substantial room between existing allowances and the announced 30% maximum. They do not show actual killing, or establish that every region will use the full allowance.⁠2

In Krasnoyarsk Krai, the ministry estimates a population of 26,631 bears and reports more than 2,500 conflict situations. Its existing removal limit is 19%. A 30% allowance would stand 11 percentage points above that reported limit. The conflict figure is broader than a count of confirmed attacks and should not be presented as one.⁠2

Kamchatka has an estimated 24,225 brown bears and a permitted harvest of 3,443, described by the ministry as 14% of the population. Irkutsk Oblast has an estimated 22,413 bears and a permitted harvest of 4,098, described as 18%. Those percentages are rounded; compared with them, the announced maximum is 16 percentage points higher in Kamchatka and 12 points higher in Irkutsk.⁠2

Irkutsk also has 2,119 confirmed cases of bears approaching people, according to the ministry. As with the national approach reports and Krasnoyarsk’s conflict situations, that figure measures encounters rather than confirmed attacks. The regional examples illustrate different local circumstances, not a uniform national emergency that can be measured by one percentage.⁠2

The distinction between an allowance and its use matters just as much. No verified national harvest total accompanies the announcement. Multiplying the national bear estimate by 30% would therefore produce neither a count of bears already killed nor a defensible forecast of how many will be killed. The relevant decisions and removal work still have to be established.⁠2⁠19

Even the descriptions of the regulatory change need care. Interfax calls the 30% figure a maximum removal norm. Parliamentary Gazette’s headline says regions will be obliged to increase the harvest to 30% of the population. Those formulations are not interchangeable: permission to authorize removals is different from a requirement to set a particular allowance, and different again from an obligation actually to kill that many animals.⁠11⁠12

The operative amendment and its commencement provisions have not been verified in the available evidence. It is therefore not established that regions must kill 30% of their bears, that the changes are already in force, or precisely how the new standard changes their legal duties. The secure account is narrower: the ministry has announced a regional 30% maximum and says the regulatory changes are registered.⁠2⁠11

The announcement follows an earlier effort to reshape regional bear management. On September 30, Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov proposed population standards tailored to particular localities. The government was also preparing rules intended to let regions make population-control decisions more quickly. November’s announcement supplies a specific regional figure, but not a published test of whether that approach improves safety.⁠4⁠7⁠2

Money is part of the response, too. The government is preparing assistance for removing bears that approach people and feed at rubbish dumps. Thirteen regions have applied, and the ministry says planned joint financing exceeds 80 million rubles. That is proposed support for regional removal costs—not verified expenditure, and not evidence that any particular number of bears has been removed.⁠2

The policy’s stated objective is fewer attacks, not simply more bears killed. Judging it requires keeping those outcomes separate. A larger permitted harvest could be fully used, partly used or barely used; none of those possibilities alone establishes whether people are safer. The announcement gives Russia’s regions a prominent numerical standard. It does not yet give the public an answer to the question that matters most: whether the measures that follow will prevent the next fatal encounter.