© Michael Nichols / National Geographic Society
Shpilenok photographed this Kamchatka brown bear in the Valley of the Geysers in early 2006. He shot with a Nikon D2x and 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom. Click photo for more images by Igor Shpilenok and others.
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Igor Shpilenok fell in love with the Bryansk Forest in western Russia at age 13. He dedicated himself to photographing the forest, and with his pictures he lobbied to save it from development. In 1987 he became the first director of the Bryansky Les Zapovednik (strict nature reserve). Because of his efforts, he became a target of death threats from poachers and loggers.
Since 1999, Shpilenok has been photographing national parks and nature reserves throughout Russia "to share the beauty and ecological significance of these natural areas with the world." Most recently he has turned his focus to conservation issues in the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east of Russia. "It is Russia's final frontier, a land of big bears, large salmon resources, and fiery volcanoes," says Shpilenok. At the heart of Kamchatka is the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. Until last spring, the central attraction of the reserve was the Valley of the Geysers, one of the few places on earth where geysers occur naturally. Then a landslide caused an entire mountain to crumble, burying this world wonder.
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For Shpilenok, it is the Kamchatka brown bear that defines the burly beauty of this place. "It is the second largest bear in the world, after the Kodiak bear," Shpilenok says, "but the population is not well managed. Poaching and poor monitoring are factors. And overfishing threatens the bears' main food -- salmon." Shpilenok notes that the depletion of the salmon population would affect more than just the bears: One quarter of all wild Pacific salmon for human consumption comes from Kamchatka.
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