Kamchatka, Russia | Where the Salmon Rule, National Geographic Magazine: Grizzly Remains

Previous Image Next Image

Sometimes you get the grizzly, sometimes it gets you . . . This fisherman in the Vyvenka River killed a brown bear because it stole his fish one too many times. Indigenous life in the north of Kamchatka is not for show, and not for tourists. Koryak people spend all summer in their fishing camps storing up enough dried salmon to last through the winter. If a brown bear steals your fish, people up north kill it, which is illegal. It is also illegal to run a motorboat on a salmon spawning river in Russia, but there is no enforcement.  Anatoli Navykha, above, believes if you leave the fish overnight in the river that the meat becomes more tender. Anatoli is one of the few lucky Koryaks to have a state job. He used to be paid 8 times what people were paid in Moscow, but now he is lucky to be at par with Moscow state workers. And Khailino is three times as expensive as Moscow because everything has to come in by MI-8 helicopter at $3,000 an hour.