Russian hospitality

In Vietnam, an American soldier commented famously that the US forces were burning a village in order to save it. Well, in that spirit, Russian authorities are lifting a half-century old ban on killing polar bears in order to preserve the species.

The largest living land carnivores are already battling to survive as the polar ice cap shrinks earlier each year. The result is that they are going to turn up on land masses on the edge of the Arctic, like northern Russia. Nice to see that the government there will have a welcoming committee in place to greet them.