The Bear Whisperers

A gunshot rings through the crisp January air. The sound rebounds off the tall conifer trees of the Russian taiga forest in the Tver Region, 100 miles north of Moscow. A hunter pulls a medium-sized brown bear from its snowy den and finds a litter of newborn cubs within. Feeling remorse, the hunter gathers the cubs and places them in a sack. He then turns to skinning the mother bear.

The next morning, Dr. Valentin Pazhetnov finds a tattered potato sack on his porch steps. He picks up the bundle, calling to his wife, Svetlana. They open the sack to find four bear cubs, each smaller than a grapefruit. Only one of the infants shows signs of life. Three have frozen to death during the night, when the temperature dropped to -20o F. Over the next few weeks, the couple nurses the cub back to life. They feed him warm cow’s milk from a bottle and give him medication for his pneumonia. As the cub grows strong and healthy, the Pazhetnovs teach him essential survival skills and then return him to the wild.

Although hunting female bears is not prohibited in most of Russia, it is generally frowned upon. However, hunters often cannot tell the difference between males and females. Russians sometimes hunt bears for trophies, but more often for fur and meat and sometimes for bile, which is used in eastern medicine. The Pazhetnovs have saved more than 70 bear cubs orphaned by hunters since they began their volunteer bear rescue program in 1974. Both biologists, the Pazhetnovs have studied the bears’ behavior and ecology over the years, gradually developing a methodology for raising bears in captivity and releasing them into the wild.

Early in the morning at the Chisty Les (Clean Forest) Biological Station in the Tsentralno-Lesnoy Zapovednik (Central-Forest Strict Nature Reserve) in the Tver Region, the Pazhetnovs are busy washing and feeding their cubs. Svetlana Pazhetnova lifts a small, ten-day old cub from a wooden box. She delicately washes the cub over a bucket, gently massaging the genital area, as a mother bear would do to help her infant urinate. She hands the cub to her husband who towels it dry. Then she takes up the next cub and repeats the ritual until all of the recent arrivals have had their morning bath. The cubs squeak and whine, delighted to be clean and warm, as though their mother had caressed them with her wet tongue.

On the breakfast menu this morning and every morning is porridge. Svetlana stands over a pot on the stove, stirring the oatmeal. She ladles some into a bowl, then lets the cubs nibble the porridge from the end of her finger. So begins each winter day at the Pazhetnov house.  Once fed, they romp around their enclosure – a log cabin the Pazhetnovs have equipped with boxes for them to play in and posts for them to climb. When the weather gets warmer, the bears will go outside and frolic in the yard.

As soon as the cubs are able to walk, they venture into the woods close to their foster home, coming and going as they please. Surrounded by the protected Tsentralno-Lesnoy Zapovednik, the cubs are safe for now. They learn social behavior as they romp with the other bears, pretending to fight opponents or woo potential mates. Valentin Pazhetnov and his 40-year-old son Sergei – also a biologist – show the babies how to find food by sifting through pine needles for slugs, picking berries off bushes, and chewing leaves and grasses.  They instill fear of humans in them by never letting the bears see people outside the family. When the bears are old enough to fend for themselves – at around seven or eight months – they wander into the woods and don’t come back. Sometimes, older bears will return to visit their foster home for a brief sojourn.

Since 1990, the Pazhetnovs have successfully returned over 50 bear cubs to the forests around the biological station. For the first time in 1994, the Pazhetnov’s raised bear cubs born in the Kazan Zoo and released them into the wild. The family takes in an average of eight to 10 orphaned bear cubs each year. Although releasing ten bears per year probably does not significantly impact the bear population in the Tver Region, which fluctuates around 2,000, saved bear cubs can be released into other regions where bears are threatened.

In 1996, the Pazhetnovs began releasing seven-month-old bear cubs into the Bryansk Forest in Western Russia. Bears had nearly disappeared altogether from the Bryansk Region: probably no more than ten bears remained prior to 1996. Since then, the Pazhetnovs released 12 bears into the Bryansky Les Zapovednik, more than doubling the local population. The Pazhetnovs will continue to take bears to the Bryansk Region. Based on this successful program, they will likely begin releasing bears to other regions in Russia where bear populations are at risk.

With more than 25 years of experience behind them, the Pazhetnovs are helping reserves in other parts of the world deal with their orphaned bear cubs. Biologists and students from England, Holland, Georgia, Estonia, and all over Russia (including Ussuriysky Zapovednik in the Russian Far East) have interned at the Chisty Les Biological Station to learn the family’s methods of raising and releasing bear cubs. The Pazhetnovs have published around 50 scientific papers and three books on raising and releasing bears, including a methodological handbook on raising orphaned bear cubs and releasing them into the wild.

Now a third generation of Pazhetnovs – the two grandsons Valentin and Vasily – have taken an interest in raising the baby bears, ensuring that orphaned bear cubs will have a foster home for many years to come.  RL