Super-rich kill bears for ‘sport’

TOM NEWTON DUNN
in Russia

The Sun: 12th January 2011

THE World Conservation Union has upped the Asiatic black bear’s status to “vulnerable to extinction”.

Conservationists estimate there are just 50,000 left in the world.

Also known as the Tibetan black bear, the Himalayan black bear, or moon bear, they have a thick black coat and a white V marking on their chest.

They grow to about 6ft and males weigh up to 150kg. They can live up to 25 years.

They eat berries, grass, seeds, nuts, honey and some meat.

Of the world’s eight species of bear, six are at risk of extinction.

Only the American black bear and European brown bear are considered safe.

Black Bear photo Copyright Jim Robertson

In a sickening execution, a blood-crazed millionaire blasts an endangered bear to death as it hibernates.

Given no chance, the rare beast is woken in its den, terrorised and shot at point-blank range.

The grinning “hunter” then poses proudly next to its blood-drenched corpse for a twisted souvenir snap.

Hundreds of Asiatic black bears have been killed this winter in the vast forests of Siberia. And all for nothing more than sick thrills and a prized trophy hide.

The massacre of these majestic animals has become big business, flying in the face of international conventions which outlaw it, The Sun can reveal.

Yet it is not just rich Russians who are happy to exterminate their own national symbol. Well-heeled clients from Britain, the US, Germany, Spain, Poland and Finland have also booked Asiatic black hunting trips in the past year, we have discovered.

Such slayings were illegal for years, but Russian president Vladimir Putin has now relaxed his country’s ban on killing the species, to appease the super-rich.

Hunting the bears remains strictly illegal in the other countries where they live, including India, China and Japan.

Like most bears, the Asiatic black hibernates from December to the end of February, when winter snows begin to melt. Many of the females killed as they hibernate are pregnant, as they breed in the summer and autumn, ready to give birth in the spring.

In an exposé of the barbaric practice, we posed as would-be hunters to obtain shocking video footage of three recent hunts.

In an office off a busy central Moscow street, The Sun was offered a four-day trip to depart in a week’s time — with FOUR Asiatic black kills guaranteed — for the sum of £16,000.

The hibernating bears had already been located in deep forests outside the city of Khabarovsk, 3,500 miles east of Moscow.

A travel business named Slavic Trophy Club is one of a handful in Moscow that take bear hunters to the killing fields.

Slavic Trophy Club’s Nikolai Lynkov assured us: “They are there ready and waiting for you. I can promise you four kills for sure, maybe six if you are lucky.

“It is legal in Russia to hunt Asiatic black bears. There is no problem with that. You just have to be 18 years old.”

The persecuted bears do not die a quick and painless death.

To coax them out of their dens into the waiting gunman’s firing line, organisers resort to extraordinarily cruel tactics.

Lynkov explained: “We know where the bears are because we pay local people to keep track of them.

“They like to hibernate in hollow tree trunks but sometimes it is not easy to get them out.

“Don’t worry though, they always come — even if we have to cut them out.”

On one of the hunts we have video footage of, it took workers 20 minutes of torture to force a bear to climb out of its tree trunk into the sights of the hunter, standing 15 metres away.

At first, two men jabbed the animal with sharpened spears through a hole cut in the tree’s base. When that didn’t work, one of them threw a smoke grenade into the trunk in a bid to choke the bear out. That too failed, so oily rags were lit to set fire to the den. Then several pistol rounds were fired to scare the bear into movement.

Only when the workers began to chainsaw through the hollow trunk to get at the bear did it finally climb the trunk and emerge. On reaching the top, the bleary-eyed giant gave a chilling roar once it saw its pursuers.

It made a desperate last attempt to scamper off to safety — but was gunned down in the snow after only a few paces.

For an extra £800, Slavic Trophy Club promised to skin any bear we killed, make it into a rug, and fly it to London.

Or for £4,000 we could have the whole beast stuffed and shipped instead. Some hunting firms openly trade in the twisted “sport” in the West.

Sergei Shushunov is a Russian-American who runs the Russian Hunting Agency from his home town of Glencoe, Illinois. When we approached him posing as rich hunters he also promised to organise for us the killing of a bear woken from hibernation.

Trying to justify the activity, Shushunov said: “Denned bear hunting in Russia is as old as trapping. In old times it required nothing but a spear. The adrenaline rush can be incredible.”

Hunting Asiatic bears was legalised in Russia four years ago. Bored of slaughtering the more common brown bear, oil and gas-rich Russians craved a special trophy for the walls of their gaudily decorated homes and offices.

With soft and long fur, an Asiatic bear’s hide is highly prized because of the rarity of the animals.

Their numbers are now so depleted, they are all but impossible to find in the wild — which is why hunts resort to killing them in their dens.

Animal campaigners last night demanded that ministers act on The Sun’s investigation and lobby President Putin to stop the barbaric hunting.

International wildlife charity the Born Free Foundation said: “This simply has to stop. The Asiatic black bear is highly endangered, under constant assault in the wild throughout the continent, and even incarcerated in tiny cages in China to be milked for stomach bile, which is used in medicine there.

“We should all demand at the highest levels of government that Russia immediately stops all hunting of wild bears. Until then, there will be a price on the head of every wild bear in the country.”

The World Conservation Union’s bear expert Dr David Garshelis said: “There is a threat that the Asiatic black bear may soon be extinct in entire countries. We are very worried.

“It is alarming to hear that this is happening in Russia. The ethics of exactly how it is done is also a concern.

“There is clearly no sport in this practice at all. We are very pleased you have made this report.”

t.newtondunn@the-sun.co.uk

View photos and video of Sick hunters gun down bears; Gunmen laugh as they target bears; Sitting duck … terrified bear scrambles from it’s burning den into the killer’s sights Here: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/762288/News-Endangered-bears-Killed-for-sport.html#ixzz2TChxbdV4