On 25 March 2015, a Nenets Autonomous Area justice of the peace found Andrei Ilyushin, who shot a polar bear on Vaigach Island in April 2014, guilty under Article 258.1 (Illegal production and trafficking of valuable wildlife and aquatic biological species listed in the Red List of the Russian Federation and (or) protected by international treaties of the Russian Federation) of the Criminal Code and sentenced him to nine months of correctional labour, with a 20 percent deduction from his salary.

“The court’s decision was met with mixed feelings,” said head of the WWF Bear Patrol Viktor Nikiforov. “On the one hand, we should commend the area’s police, who managed to bring a case of polar bear poaching before the court for the first time since 2007. On the other hand, the poacher got off easy – a fine of 300,000 roubles means nothing given the fact that polar bear skins are sold for over 1 million roubles on the black market.”

“The police are continuing their work. Recently, they confiscated another skin, and we hope that the Bear Patrol project and Ministry of the Interior will block the polar bear poaching pipeline from this area for years to come,” he said.