PREVENTING CONFLICTS BETWEEN BEARS AND BEEKEEPERS IN THE LAZO DISTRICT of SOUTH-EASTERN PRIMORYE, RUSSIA
REPORT 2004
By Alexey Zborovskiy (Alexei Zborovski)
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For general introduction click here.
Today, a very significant part of all moonbears of southern regions of Primorye is killed on the forest beeyards (while other large part is being murdered in winter time - in the tree dens). For last century, the traditional tool, by which beekeepers protect their hives from bears in this area, is the gun. Former director of the Lazo State Reserve (famous for his wildlife defending activities) Dr. V. Khramtsov says: "For sure, in the Lazo district bears are being killed at most forest beeyards. Their paws and gallbladders are now frequently sold to Chinese smugglers. But majority of local beekeepers are afraid of law. Thus, when they shot bears, they hide corps as deep as possible. This is why obtaining statistic on bears, killed at beeyards, is an extremely hard task”.
Nevertheless, through conversations with beekeepers and other local people, and also from literature, we aware that significant part (if not say – most) of all annually harvested bears in southern regions of Primorye die at the beeyards.
Project's brief history
Through 2001-2006, I lived in Primorye's forest village called Lazo (Image 1).
Image 1. It's a south-eastern Primorye, Russia. The brown-gray spot (on a left up) is a Khanka lake. The red point indicates the Lazo village, which is situated app. 60 km from the Sea of Japan. The cities nearest to Lazo are Partizansk and Nakhodka.
In 2003, my neighbor Mr. Grigoriy Mikhel' put up his beeyard in the Zhukovskiy creek's valley – just 7 km from Lazo. However, the beeyard's land belongs to Mr. A. Kiperko, who's family kept bees there for decades. As Kiperko himself says: “Earlier, I assisted my father at this very beeyard. Together, we ate not just a single bear there”.
In summer 2003, a female bear, accompanied by her two cubs, paid first visit to Grigoriy's yard...
We are working
In early spring 2004, I asked my neighbor if he'd like his hives be protected from bears by the new method: a sustained electric fence. Grigoriy met my idea with excitement. He even gave me 4 000 rubles (app. $135) in order to ease my search for investors of this unusual project. (Indeed, the project seemed to be unique: till this moment, neither myself, nor Grigoriy knows of anybody, who is using electric fences on apiaries in our district).
Through Internet, I found Ms. Jill Robinson - the founder and director of the Animals Asia Foundation (AAF). As I uncovered later, Jill's main work is to buy, cure, and then to exhibit to wide public moonbears at her bear center in China. She also produces and sales bear media products (such as movies) in this center, and collects donations. Jill's bears are quite unusual: before arriving to the mentioned center, they spend years under horrific conditions on Chinese bile manufactures (mostly known as bear farms). This extremely unhumane and population threatening international bear bile trade is discussed briefly in my article: http://www.beararea.narod.ru/endofbiglie_engl.html. Majority of bears come to such farms illegally: some are trapped in Chinese forests (last years – very few, however, cause very few wild bears remain in China now), many are smuggled (as cubs) from eastern Russia, Cambodia and other Asian countries. The remainig part is composed of bears, which were born in captivity*.
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*However, in spring of 2004, I didn't question all details of AAF's work with bears in China. My main interest was to obtain material support for our project with Grigoriy. In fact, it wasn't difficult to convince Jill to join our project. She gladly agreed to support our work, which had such an “obvious benefit for both people and animals alike”, according to her own words. I signed the agreement and - in just a couple of weeks - received the sum of $1850. In accordance with the agreement, I had to include AAF's link and logo in my public reports. AAF placed announcement of our mutual project on their website (www.animalsasia.org).
In June, I've started to build a first bear electric fence in Lazo district. Since most parts was difficult to find in our village, sometimes I had to go to Nakhodka and even Vladivostok. Other days, I hired locals, which helped with hardest things, such as grounding. It was all so fun. You can see some photos below:
April 2004: Grigoriy's hives before the fence was built
Animals Asia Foundation logo
Myself with Grigoriy and dog
Local guyes: Volodya and Viktor are building fence
We're making grounding..
Painting..
Ready!
Through August – September, there were few fresh bear tracks detected near the area, but bears never touched hives. All went fine, but, unexpectedly, Grigoriy and Kiperko falled into big argue. Grigoriy took his hives back in Lazo. He was about to take his wooden cabin and storages too, but people (Kiperko?)... burnt them off! Alas! Such a drastic turn of events... Grigoriy took our fence apart and brought it to Lazo, where it was rotting under November's rain till I put it under some roof - with hope to use it later – on more successfull apiary.
See next report: Bears and beekeepers 2005.