Preparing to leave. Taken at home in Alberta the morning I left. I was
cutting pieces of aluminum for my sponson down tubes. These are the wing
tip float down tubes which I have a habit of breaking off.
Sergey's camp. He is the big man an the left with the ponytail. One of
the disgruntled hunters is sitting at the cabin door.
A view of Goliginsky Lake where we will rebuild.
(Click on any Image to see a higher resolution version)
This year has gone a bit easier as far as red tape is concerned, but still it seems to take for ever to get out of Petropavlovsk to go to our cabin at Kambalnoe Lake and see if our bears survived another winter. The director of the preserve where we work was out of the city and then got weathered into where ever he was. It snowed several times since I have arrived so in a way I am glad to let the weather settle out before I headed into the wilderness. Early May was hot apparently.
There has been also lots to do to get lined out on our new adventure with Sergey Pobovsky. He is a fellow who has invited us to move out of the South Kamchatka to his place which is his hunting camp. If that seems to you like a strange thing to be doing, I must agree but bare with me while I explain. Sergey has the hunting concession on 350 square miles of wilderness joining onto the north end of this preserve. When we fly here there has always seemed to be as many bears in his area as there are in the preserve. The first time I saw this guy he was one of the roughest looking bushmen I have ever seen. Long hair, longer beard and bush clothing which had been lived in for a while. Over the years I have done him the odd favor with my aircraft and we have become friends. He explains that the reason I always see many bears in his area is that he protects them better than the preserve protects theirs. He says that poachers don't dare come into his territory. Apparently he talks tough and means it.
What Maureen and I have been doing here for the last four years caught his imagination and last winter we got a incredible offer which took us by surprise and our first reaction was to reject it. Neither of us could imagine continuing our work any where but here in our spot which we love, but after thinking about it we decided to take him up on it.
Apparently Sergey has been wanting to stop killing bears for a long time. He has not personally killed one for many years, but his hunters bring him big money even by my standards and in a country where the average University professor makes $60 a month, his income is impressive. He has, however decided to phase out of hunting over the next three to five years and go into eco-tourism and he says he is willing to take a loss. His idea came to us out of the blue last winter in the form of an invitation to move our bear orphanage to his place. His argument was that we have put up with a lot of hassle working where we do and have never got permission to adopt any more cubs even though each fall we are told that the following year we will get the go ahead. Each year more cubs turn up in someone's care who have no way of keeping them longer than the 15 to 30 pound phase of their life. We have had to just watch and wait until they disappear suddenly. (See June 2nd 1999)
Our problem has been that our bear work is learning about coexistence and the cubs we raised were subjects of this. It was never intended to be a reintroduction study but nevertheless it has worked as that. Because we just let them become independent with no discouragement to make them afraid of people it has relied on the fact that we work in a remote place to work. From the first year it has been difficult to thwart all the dire predictions that they will suddenly turn on us. First the bet was that it would be before they were even a year old and the warnings have got louder and more persistent each year since. My theory is that bears behavior towards people is simply a product of the treatment they have received from humans, regardless of their age and little more.
After thinking about Sergey's proposal that we move, Maureen and I decided that it had some great merits. The bureaucracy working in the Preserve has always been difficult and repetitive. And we have reached a place in our understanding of bears where we need to take the next step. His idea is to have the orphaned bears raised in the same manner as we have done with Chico Biscuit and Rosie but at his place. We want the orphanage to be observed by tourists. We believe we are ready for this because we have proven to ourselves that we can live very safely with bears providing we follow a simple protocol. It made sense that we should now look at bringing other people into the formula to see if people could be taught this same protocol as a demonstration that others can learn to be safe as well. What better subjects to try this on than an ex hunter and green tourists? We see it as the ultimate challenge and feel ready to attempt it. If we can make this work it should suggest to others that perhaps these animals and people can learn to share our increasingly crowded planet better than we have been doing. And under the circumstances, how could we turn down an offer from a man who has decided to make such a dramatic transition from hunting?
A couple days ago while I was waiting to be able to go check on our two bears, I flew down on the helicopter that was to bring back the last hunting party of three Americans. I know Sergey's place because I have dropped in for tea while flying to Kambalnoe on several occasions. The hunters were glum. They had failed to get any bears and Sergey was trying to explain to them that it was all just a part of hunting. A early thaw had melted the snow and they couldn't get out in the field very far on the snow machines. I could see why the one guy I talked to was not about to hoof it out under his own steam. He had emphysema so bad he could only take a few steps before he had to stop and gasp for air. The other two were not much better off. There definitely seemed to be a contest here about who was going to die first, the hunters or the bears. Guess who's side I was rooting for?
The thought of building another cabin and starting this new part of our study is a bit exhausting but if things go as well as I hope they do and believe they can, it will be a very convincing demonstration that bears really are different than their reputation has them slated.
My next entry will be from Kambalnoe and I will have seen the grownup cubs or will have not. I always feel a bit tense knowing all their possible hazards. I wish Maureen was here to go down there with me.
- Charlie