Environmentalists sound alarm over bear hunting in Belarus

July 21, Pozirk. Environmental activists have urged Belarus to ban bear hunting, the Ecodom association stated on its Telegram channel. The organization says that bear hinting is allowed since July 1, “for the first time in the history of sovereign Belarus and for the first time since the 1930s.”

According to the activists, two bears have been killed already. The first was shot by Dzianis Klimiec, a hunter based in the Brest region, and the second by Andrej Rusanovič, a former deputy police chief in Minsk.

Authorities lifted the ban citing a rise in bear population. A deputy director of the National Academy of Sciences’ Center for Bioresources, Pavieł Hieštaŭt, told reporters a year ago that Belarus had about 130 brown bears in the late 1980s, 240 in 2004, and about 800 at the time of his presentation.

In October 2022, the Committee for State Security (KGB) declared Ecodom members an “extremist group.” The organization said that it will carry on environmental work for a new, green Belarus.

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