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Outside Magazine December 2004

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A Message In Blood (Cont.)


	Charlie Russell in a wilderness area south of the capital: "I cannot give up on this place." (Gueorgui Pinkhassov)

WHEN RUSSELL AND ENNS FIRST scouted Kamchatka, the region had only recently been opened to foreigners, after decades of Soviet lockdown. To them it was an Eden, unspoiled bear country where they could make their own rules. And, of course, finding bears would not be a problem: In Kamchatka, some 10,000 grizzlies roam an area one-sixth as big as the territory inhabited by 30,000 bears in Alaska.

Nearly the size of California, the 1,000-mile-long peninsula was stocked with ICBMs, MiGs, and nuclear submarines, the first line of defense on the Soviets' eastern front during the Cold War. Since Kamchatka was off-limits to most Soviets, its wildlife was protected by default. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, the region was again opened to the West and the newly moneyed Moscow elite. With this,

Everywhere in the dark copses there were bears. We counted nearly 50. Some 10,000 grizzlies roam the kamchatka peninsula, an area one-sixth as big as the territory inhabited by alaska's 30,000 bears.

Kamchatka's vast natural resources suddenly faced 21st-century threats, even as its residents struggled to develop a modern economy.

Today, some of what's happening is low-impact tourism—500 Western fishermen fly in every summer to catch and release salmon; snowboarders and heli-skiers make fresh tracks on Kamchatka's volcanoes; and thousands of tourists helicopter to the famed Valley of the Geysers, the region's Yellowstone. But tourism is just gaining a foothold. The real growth industry has been bear hunting—often poorly managed or illegal—along with poaching of everything from salmon to snow sheep to lynx.

When conservation funds dried up after the Soviet collapse, Kamchatka's Kronotsky Biosphere Nature Reserve—the 2.4-million-acre centerpiece of Kamchatka's five protected areas and the agency that administers them—was only too happy to host Russell and Enns. The couple's dollars doubtless helped warm the relationship. In a decade, Russell said, they spent more than $1 million on their bear project, raised almost entirely through small grants from Canadian and American foundations and individuals.

In time, the reserve's officials granted the couple—known to locals as nashi Kanadtsy, "our Canadians"—extraordinary autonomy. In 1996, they built a birch cabin on Kambalnoye Lake. The next spring, they learned that three female cubs orphaned by poachers had turned up at the zoo in the town of Yelizovo. With a discreet nod from the zookeeper, the Canadians "stole" the cubs, as Russell put it, and took them down to the lake by helicopter, convincing the reserve to legalize the "adoption" after the fact. They named the cubs Chico, Rosie, and Biscuit and started training them to someday reenter the wild.

For six seasons at Kambalnoye, from 1997 to 2002, Russell and Enns worked with the cubs as they grew into 500-pound grizzlies. They taught them to fish, kept predator males away with an electric fence, and showed them new territory by leading them in kayaks across the lake, Enns paddling as the bears swam behind. Even as independent adults, the three stayed uncommonly sociable. Every spring, after the annual return to Kambalnoye, Russell and Chico would rub noses, and he would place his palms on hers, knitting his long fingers through her claws. The biggest surprise was that wild bears befriended the couple as well. One female, nicknamed Brandy, even took to leaving her young with them to baby-sit.

By the fall of 2002, the project was nearing completion. Rosie went missing in 1999—killed, the couple believed, by a predator male. Chico took off on her own in 2000. Only Biscuit remained. Meanwhile, Russell and Enns had gained international fame; they were covered in television documentaries and in newspapers around the world. Their 2002 chronicle Grizzly Heart was a bestseller in Canada, and the lushly photographed adaptation would soon be published as Grizzly Seasons in the U.S.

Most important, they believed Biscuit had bred; if all went well, she would nurse her first cubs in the spring of 2003. Reintroducing bears was remarkable enough; having one breed and successfully raise a new, wild generation was astounding.

"That would have certainly been a landmark," said Natural Resources Defense Council bear scientist Louisa Willcox, an ally and supporter of Russell's. "Something few could dispute."

But Russell never saw Biscuit again. He feels certain she was killed.

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