Absolute record: Russian authorities have authorized the extermination of 44,682 bears in 2026.

The extermination of bears continues. Along with the growing demand for bear meat, bear body parts in Asia for “traditional medicine,” and mass hunting tourism in Russia’s forests for the purpose of recreational trophy hunting. Unfortunately, the situation is worsening!

Every year, we conduct analytical work to calculate the number of hunting quotas issued for bear shooting in our country. And the problem is becoming increasingly large-scale.

So, we have completed the preparation of the bear extermination registry for the 2025/2026 hunting season — the regional authorities have officially signed decrees for quotas allowing the shooting of 44,682 bears across the country. And this is only for the regions that made it into our registry.

Summary of the Problem

Now briefly about the situation, for those who are not yet familiar with the problem.

1. Since around 2019, many regions of the country have taken a sharp course toward developing the trophy hunting industry and have begun actively attracting trophy hunters from around the world. Hunters from Europe, the USA, and other countries started arriving in Russia en masse, and “hunting tourism” among local citizens has also been growing.

   
   

2. According to official data, there are already about 5 million active hunters in the country, and one-third of all publicly accessible forest lands have been transferred into private hands for the organization of recreational hunting.

   
   

3. Also, starting around 2019, packages of legislative bills were adopted aimed at developing the paid-killing industry. A law on enclosure hunting was passed, hunting with bows and crossbows was legalized, and hunting was allowed near populated areas and in green zones.

   
   

4. The regions began actively increasing the number of quotas issued for the shooting of wild animals. With rising demand came the urgent need to supply that demand.

   
   

5. For several years, the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation has been actively trying to pass a bill allowing bear hunting throughout the entire winter — during hibernation. A few years ago, they managed to extend the hunting season until December 31, even though bears go into hibernation by the end of November, many with their cubs, and pregnant females give birth directly in their dens. This did not stop the Ministry; the hunting terms were extended.

   
   

   In our opinion, this is driven by growing demand for “den hunting” among hunters and foreign “hunting tourists.” Under the brand “Russian Safari,” the most prioritized form of hunting, according to lawmakers, is the so-called traditional den hunting. In summer 2024, thanks to public efforts, it was possible to halt the adoption of the Ministry’s bill that would legalize winter bear hunting throughout the entire hibernation season. But, according to our sources, such an initiative is planned to return later!

Strange Circumstances

Before the large-scale development of the hunting industry in the country, strange circumstances appeared that many paid no attention to.

In July 2018, the FSB of Russia developed a draft government decree proposing that brown and Himalayan bears be considered a strategically important resource due to the decline in their populations. The Federal Security Service proposed placing bears under protection because of their mass slaughter for export to illegal foreign markets.

Meanwhile, in March 2018, the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation also stated that the bear population in Russia had declined by 36% in just two years. According to their data, the number of bears dropped from 225,000 individuals in 2015 to 143,000 in 2017.

In June 2018, the General Prosecutor’s Office requested that the Russian government include all species of brown bears in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation. Thus, Russia’s security and legal authorities unanimously stood up in defense of bears — both the FSB and the Prosecutor General’s Office recognized the problem.

The scandal was quickly “hushed up,” and the information suppressed at all levels. The bears were never protected!

Instead, starting precisely from 2018, regional authorities began rapidly increasing quotas for bear shootings in the wild. In many regions, the number of quotas has multiplied several times by now.

Bear Extermination Registry

Considering all these “strange circumstances,” we are conducting our own nationwide monitoring — collecting and consolidating data from all official regional decrees on bear hunting quotas.

In autumn 2025, our registry was updated. Below are the results.

For the 2025/2026 hunting season (one calendar year), authorities have signed decrees granting quotas to shoot at least 44,682 bears across the country.

Over the past years, these numbers were:

Thus, if in 2019 authorities allowed the killing of 24,838 bears, by 2026 this number reached over 44,000 individuals.

The volume of officially permitted killings has increased nearly 1.8 times. The most significant surge began after 2022, with quotas growing annually by 10–15%.

The most active quota growth is recorded in Zabaykalsky Krai, the Altai Republic, and the Far East — areas with highly commercialized hunting. Such growth rates threaten the stability of populations and disrupt the natural balance of taiga ecosystems.

Below are the TOP-5 regions with the highest quota growth from 2019 to 2026.

Download Our Registry

We have prepared the registry as a document. It contains all data on quotas for recent years, including the current hunting season (2025/2026). You can download, study, and share the information!

File Download Registry (PDF) 29 KB

Inconsistencies

Regional authorities try to justify the need to increase bear killings by claiming that the bear population is allegedly growing and urgent regulation is needed.

• According to scientific data, including research conducted over more than 20 years in Japan, it has been proven that bear populations are never uncontrolled and naturally self-regulate through biological mechanisms.

   

• We conduct work on bear monitoring, yet in reviewing documentation we see that quotas are also rapidly growing for killing other wild species — deer, sables, lynxes, and so on. Thus, authorities are essentially asserting that the populations of all wild animals are “growing excessively” and that soon “there will be too many animals for the wilderness to hold.”

   

  However, according to major global meta-studies involving hundreds of top scientists, it has been proven that the total number of wild animals on Earth has declined by about 73% in the last 50 years — primarily due to the catastrophic scale of “development” of wild nature, recreational hunting, and habitat loss.

   

• All data on the number of bears in the wild, as well as on other species, are collected solely from the statements of hunting organizations. Enterprises that run recreational hunting “report” population data from their own territories! Given their commercial interest, there is reason to believe that no reliable statistics on species numbers in Russian forests exist.

   

  Meanwhile, as stated earlier, one-third of all publicly accessible forests have been transferred to private hands for organizing paid killings of wild animals. In fact, the forest sector is now controlled by businesses interested in maximizing profits through animal slaughter.

   

• Often, authorities respond to our remarks by saying that not all issued quotas are “used by hunters,” and that actual killings are much lower. However, in September 2025 it became known that only in the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Republic of Bashkortostan, more than 2,500 applications were submitted by hunters wishing to kill bears — all participating in an electronic lottery. At the same time, the regional decree allowed the killing of 600 bears! Thus, there are at least four hunters competing for each bear.

How to Help?

We are the only ones doing this work. Without public support, we cannot change anything! Spread the word, support our efforts, and join the fight for Life. Without you — we cannot make it.

Registry Summary: for one calendar year 2025/2026, it is officially permitted to kill 44,682 bears. An absolute “record” in history.

© PAVEL PASHKOV