Informant38

Brutal tragedy
Mr. Russell said that all the study bears and then some have been obliterated, a minimum of 20 and possibly as many as 40. He found spent ammunition outside the research station and signs that a helicopter had landed there.
He said the bears, including the young, had likely been shot, skinned and their gall bladders removed. Gall bladders are a pricey folk remedy in Russia and the Far East. He believes that the carcasses were then sunk in the lake or airlifted and dropped in the remote bush, as is the practice among bear poachers in this part of Russia.
Mr. Russell said it is not clear who ordered the bears killed. He suspects a Russian who has connections to the crime world.
�Alanna MitchellThe Globe and Mail Jul. 26, 2000
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{The ramifications of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent hands-off vindictive gloating of world capitalism have led directly to the rise of the Russian crime syndicate, a world power in its own right. The toll is for the most part unrecorded because it's underworld. It's tragically consistent with the immediate-gratification blindness of the powers-that-be, that they chuckle at the fall of communism and ignore the reptilian evil that's taken its place, because it hasn't yet threatened them directly.}
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bear in tree at LOC