Starving Bears Overrun Siberian Villages as Attacks Kill Ten

Residents and visitors across southern Siberia are confronting a surge in bear encounters, as starving animals push out of the taiga and into villages, farmsteads and homes.

At least ten people have been killed in such encounters since the start of the year, according to the Russian state news agency TASS. On Wednesday, a woman died in a village in the Krasnoyarsk region after a bear entered her house through a window overnight. The following day, two men foraging for berries in the Irkutsk region were mauled to death.

Others have survived with grave injuries. Sergey Sorokin, a pensioner from Buryatia, described being charged at close range. "Literally 15 meters away from me, this head is coming up and immediately running toward me. I try to punch it in its eye with my right hand, but my reaction and its are as heaven and earth," he said from a hospital bed, his legs torn by the animal.

In Buryatia, authorities ordered some schools and colleges to switch to remote learning. Curfews have been imposed in Tuva and Altai. Officials across the region are urging people to stay out of the forests. "Dear residents of the Irkutsk region, please refrain from visiting the forests. As of today, the situation is very serious," said Georgy Kuzmin, deputy chairman of the Irkutsk regional government, who confirmed that a mushroom picker was killed in the Kirovsky district and the bear later shot.

Regional governments have enlisted hunters and rangers to cull the intruding animals. In Buryatia alone, 12 bears were killed within a 24-hour period.

Zoologist Mikhail Krechmar attributes the influx to three converging factors: natural growth of the bear population, further growth from underhunting, and a poor yield of Siberian cedar, the animals' main fattening food, in southern Siberia owing to drought. He said bears being culled in the Krasnoyarsk region and Tuva carry no fat at all. "Naturally, starving animals are venturing into the areas surrounding settlements."

In the Altai biosphere reserve, senior researcher Yuri Kalinkin said bears began entering village farmsteads around 6 August, with two to ten animals arriving almost every night.

In one widely circulated video, taiga worker Nikolai Klyuchuk described being besieged for days in a house near Predivinsk. "I don't have a weapon; I had one stun grenade, so I blew it up. It walked away, but then came back," he said, adding that he threw the animal bread to distract it before running to his truck.

Residents in affected areas say the danger has upended daily life. "The house is deep in the woods, and some of the kids go to the second shift in school — that's scary, too. And the kids go out to play and ride their bikes, but the animal wasn't afraid — it was just lying in the gardens," said Ilya Potylitsin, who lives in a cottage settlement in the Krasnoyarsk region.

The encounters are expected to continue for several more months. Bears typically begin hibernating once temperatures fall below freezing and stable snow cover forms, conditions that may not arrive in the area until November or December.