MOSCOW, February 28. /TASS/. The Polar Bear Patrol educational campaign to teach people how to behave when they meet polar bears started in the Arctic's five regions, the Clean Arctic project's press service said.
"We plan to get to shift workers' towns and to settlements to organize meetings with people, to train them, to give necessary instruments to keep off the animals. Active people there would be our eyes and ears, and due to them we will be able to understand where the bear is getting close and which settlements require additional attention," the Clean Arctic ecology project's leader Andrey Nagibin said.
The project will be in the Arkhangelsk, Yamal, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutia and Chukotka Regions. Clean Arctic will offer educational seminars and webinars.
On Tuesday, Clean Arctic's volunteers had the first lesson at Salekhard's school. About 200 students attended the lesson. Additionally, the patrol specialists organized a drawing contest at a local kindergarten and after it told the kids how to behave if they meet a bear. In the near future, the patrol will create centers, where the country's leading specialists will teach the locals how to behave near polar bears.
The polar bear's global population is 25-29 thousand animals, and every third polar bear lives in the Russian Arctic. It is the biggest and the smartest predator. It is listed on the Red Data Book. Since 2019, Russia's environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, has registered 20 conflict situations between polar bears and humans.