VLADIVOSTOK, September 22. /TASS/. School and kindergarten walks have been banned in the settlement of Kirovsky in the north of Russia’s Far Eastern Primorye as hungry bears plague the region, sources from the municipal administration told TASS on Wednesday.
They said the local commission for emergency situations had imposed a temporary ban on walks at kindergartens and schools as well as recommended parents to accompany their children to schools.
These measures were imposed after local residents saw a bear with bear cubs near a residential neighborhood on September 20, while on the next day a bear attacked a pregnant woman on the outskirts of the settlement. She received minor wounds but was scared.
Failing to find enough food in their natural habitat, hungry bears are attacking Russia’s Far Eastern Primorye, where 18 incidents involving bears have been fixed this year, 14 of them in local settlements, a source from the regional administration’s hunting control department told Tass on Tuesday.
"All in all, more than 40 predators have been seen close to settlements. Eight people were injured, one of them died," the source said.
Bears need to put on extra body fat ahead of winter hibernation. In search for food, they cover big distances often reaching local settlements where they can always find something to eat, the source explained.
According to the hunting control department, the number of bears in Primorye is rather high. Some 3,000 Himalayan black bears and 2,500 brown bears live in the region. The hunting limit in the hunting season of 2014-2015 has been 147 and 141 bears accordingly.