Brown bear is one of the large carnivores in Armenia. It is included in the Red Book of Armenia categorized as Vulnerable (VU) according to IUCN criteria as well as listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as Least Concern.  

Unfortunately sometimes brown bears become a subject of hunting in the country. The most tragic case is when a bear female is poached and bear cubs stay unprotected. It is as usual brings to cubs’ death because of poaching, predation or not to be adopted to survive alone in the wild. 

Recently WWF was approached by Nature Protection Inspection to help to save a bear cub which was captured in the wild. It was clear that the cub will not survive if nobody helps it and consequently WWF encourages its partners to assist in saving the cub.

Another issue is bear – human conflict: bears sometimes damage farmlands of people. Therefore, as a pilot project WWF supports the farmers of Nrnadzor community in the buffer zone of Arevik National Park to install electric fences in order to protect pomegranate plantations from bears.