PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, August 6 (Itar-Tass) —— Policemen had to shoot down a bear which roamed about the settlement of Esso in Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka Territory frightening local residents, a local police spokesman said on Monday.
Reports about a bear appearing in the village came late on Sunday. A woman said she had encountered the beast in the street and barely escaped in the entranceway of a nearby residential. The beast chased her but failed to break inside.
Policemen found the bear some 70 meters away from the multi-apartment house. It moved towards the men and they were forced to use their service guns to kill the beast.
This was the second case this year, when policemen shot down a bear in a Kamchatka settlement. On May 12, police had to gun down a bear, which killed a fisherman on a bay shore some 400 meters away from a residential house in the town of Vilyuchinsk.
The Kamchatka brown bear, also known as the Far Eastern brown bear, is Eurasia’s largest subspecies of brown bear, with a body length of 2.4 metres, to three metres tall on hind legs and a weight of up to 700 kilograms. In the summer period, they feed on blueberries, crowberries, humpback salmon, and salmon trout. In autumn, they eat nuts from nut-pines and mountain ash, and fish. In times of famine, they eat dead fish or marine mammals, berries and graminoid vegetation. Kamchatka brown bears are generally not dangerous to humans, and only 1% of encounters result in attack. However, aggressive behavior has been reported more frequently in the past years. Thus, three persons were killed by bears in Kamchatka in 2011 alone. Hunters had to kill about 50 bears what posed danger to people.
Specialists say bears are attracted to populated localities by easy reachable foods at dumps.