Ranges at the cabin at the
mouth of our river. On nice
days they cook out side.







Rangers at Kurilskoy
Lake cabin.










Kurilskoy rangers with a net
and caviar confiscated from poachers.

(Click on any Image to see a higher resolution version)

We are into the forth week without a storm. Our record span between storms before this was 12 days. There is no wind, no clouds and bears are everywhere. There is however, a problem for the fish and hence our bears around Kambalnoye Lake because the water in the river is now so low the sockeye salmon who are trying to come here to spawn. They are holding up in some big pools about ten kilometers down stream and are waiting for a rain. They seem to know that there are about 100 bears waiting to pounce on them if they make the run for it in skimpy water.

The good weather also means good flying for me. I have put so many hours on the Kolb lately that I will soon have to ration myself because of fuel supply. I only brought four barrels this season and the way the weather started off I thought it would be about three too many. Four barrels represents about 8000 kilometers flying. Now with 420 hours (42,000 kilometers) of flying in southern Kamchatka, I am getting to know the place very well. Stretched out into a straight line this is more than the distance around the world at the equator. I drop in on the rangers now and again to see if they are having any problems. This is a difficult thing we are trying to do here so I want to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.

Several years ago, we promised Chico and Biscuit that we would not end our project here until we were quite sure they would be safe from poachers. There was lots of evidence of bears being killed in this sanctuary when we first came here in 1994. Since South Kamchatka Sanctuary (SKS) was designated a park in 1984, there has been so little money to administer the place that it was a sanctuary for poachers as well. Ironically, the hunting area north of here has been better protected as far as overall numbers of bears killed because Sergey Poblovsky, the man who owns the hunting concession, makes it very clear to all that he will shoot on sight anyone he catches poaching. To look at him you know he is capable of it.

Far north from here in 1994, we talked to several poachers while doing some research on poaching in the Far East and looking for a place in the world where we would be allowed to do this study. One poacher described that he had personally killed 61 bears that spring. He used a snow machine and an old beat up single shot 12 gage shotgun with hand loaded lead slugs that he cast himself. When the bears came out of their dens into the snowy world it was easy to spot them far away, he told us. His technique was to chase them with his snow machine until they got sick of it and turned on him. He would quickly stop, wait until they charged up to within eight meters or less and then shoot them in the head. He said that anyone using this system who was a bad shot was soon weeded out. When we talked to him he was heading out for the fall hunt of snaring bears along a salmon stream. He expected to get another 50. It is very fortunate that the price of gall bladders has gone down since then but it feels like a precarious truce to me.

During the past few years, the price of bear gall bladders has gone below the point where it is lucrative to form an expedition primarily for the purpose of killing bears. Ironically, this might be a shaky reprieve for brown bears because last summer China made a big move towards ending the practice of bear farms where thousands of bears are kept in vile conditions and milked of their bile by placing catheters into their gall bladders. This was an important step towards ending a cruel practice but I have been worried that it might mean bear gall from the wild would become a more important source once again. Kamchatka is close to China and an easy market. So far I have seen no sign of this happening.

Salmon caviar is what the poachers are after in South Kamchatka Sanctuary (SKS). Although, we in North America don't understand what the fuss is all about regarding salmon eggs (red caviar), it is sold for very high prices in Japan and in Moscow. Russians like it more than black (sturgeon) caviar. It is a lucrative enough market to allow poachers to hire helicopters and go to a wilderness river with a net and procure kegs and kegs of caviar. On years of high pink salmon runs certain rivers are set aside for legal fishing for this purpose. Much of it is gathered at processing plants from salmon caught legally in the ocean.

Caviar poaching becomes a problem for bears because it is worthwhile to kill them once the poachers are already in the bush, poaching something else. It is usually done with cable snares and the bears are often left in the snare alive for days so the stress of being caught by the leg or neck increases the size of the gall bladder. We located funding from an individual who is determined to make a difference in the protection for bears in North America. He was skeptical about funding this plan we had in Russia but Maureen and I stuck our neck out and insisted that it was worth the risk of failure. We had been carefully feeling out the possibilities for several years and had over seen small amounts of our contributors money being well spent and accounted for. The Preserve administration has cooperated and shown appreciation for the idea of putting together a more ambitious ranger program and outfitting them. There are problems of course, caused from establishing an elitist group who are paid considerably more than their normal wage of US $25 a month, in one preserve, while the others limp along as they have been. Our hope is that if it works well in this one area, we can expand the program later. The only added bureaucracy we have created is one agent who works for us as sort of an ombudsmen who heads off problems that might arise, especially when we are not here. He makes sure the rangers are getting paid and are happy.

We have rangers in three locations:
1. At the mouth of Kambalnoye River in a cabin that we funded to be renovated three years ago
2. In a cabin near the salmon research station at Kurilskoy Lake
3. At the village of Ozernovskiy, at the mouth of the river originating from Kurilskoy Lake. This village is on the edge of the South Kamchatka Sanctuary. I am not allowed to fly into Ozernovskiy because it is a military town as well as a fishing village (too much red tape), but I do fly along the boundary of the Sanctuary which roughly follows this Ozernaia River.

The river is the conduit between the Sea of Okhotsk and Kurilskoy Lake, 30 kilometers upstream, birthplace of the most important single-river salmon fishery in Russia. During the 60 years of research at the station, they have worked out that if they get two million fish back to the lake to spawn they will be able to harvest four times that many in the bay at Ozernovskiy. There is only room in the lake and river system draining into the lake, for two million to spawn. Too many can cause toxic situations and less surviving fry. As an indication of how well this seems to be managed, they have counted 1,900,000 through the weir at the station this season and there are a few left to come. This is a bit of a fluke -- there has been a variation of between .4 million and 6 million spawners over the years. SKS was created to protect both the salmon and the approximately 700 bears who also live there. We came to the Sanctuary because of the huge number of bears supported by all the food there is for them here. Because our research required that we live with the bears in a way that has made them non fearful, we feel an obligation not to leave here until some form of protection has been established.

So far nothing too troublesome has come up. I have some worries about the lack of good training here for the rangers. For this reason, we hire two well trained policemen who also work for two months during the most troubled time at Kurilskoy Lake.

- Charlie