Three poachers have been fined for killing a mother bear and her three cubs in the Russian Far East. After an eight month long trial, the men were each ordered to pay a fine equivalent to $US 4000 dollars and had their firearms confiscated.

Wildlife activists are claiming the ruling as a victory, although others are angry and say it is too lenient.

The case became high-profile as the bears drew crowds of tourists to a wildlife reserve in Kamchatka. Eco tourists used to flock to the river banks to watch and take pictures.

The mother bear, Mashka, and all of her three cubs were found dead last November.

They were shot at point-blank range, and were found with their paws were cut off. The mother bear was skinned.

The rangers who found the carcasses still remember it.
 
“It was a horrible sight,” said Sergey Shurunov. “I wouldn’t want my children to see something like this.”

The men responsible were charged but they denied any wrongdoing.
 
Nikolay Efimenko said: “We were gathering pine cones when we came across several adult bears. The cubs were huge. Our lives were in danger and we had to shoot them in self-defence.”

But the evidence, presented by the prosecutors, pointed to the fact that the men were actually poachers.

Even so, the sentence was criticised by the prosecution for being too lenient.

“The punishment is miniscule, in my opinion. If it were up to me, I’d change the law, so that poachers would pay a higher price for such offences,” prosecutor Sergey Sotnikov said.

But ecologists and wildlife authorities say the verdict is still a small victory for them – setting a precedent for all other cases of poaching in Kamchatka.