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Hunter Pavel Vasilyev kneels next to a trapped wolf outside the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk in the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic January 10, 2013. Local authorities declared a state of emergency and will start a three-month hunting campaign on January 15 to reduce growing population of wolves. Wolves killed more than 16,000 domesticated reindeer last year, according to the regional government.STRINGER/RUSSIA/Reuters

It's open season on wolves across a wide swath of Siberia.

Worried about attacks by wolves that are devouring reindeer in increasing numbers, the leader of Russia's vast Sakha Republic issued a decree on Tuesday initiating a three-month hunt targeting the predators.

The goal is to bring the wolf population of the India-sized region also known as Yakutia down from more than 3,500 to the "optimal number" of about 500, Russia's official gazette, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, reported.

"The population is more concerned than ever about mass wolf attacks on farm animals," the paper quoted Sakha President Yegor Borisov as saying at a recent regional government meeting. "We must determine a clear plan of action."

In the resulting decree, Mr. Borisov announced the start of a three-month campaign of "special measures for regulating the quantity of wolves" in Sakha, which stretches north of the Arctic Circle and has fewer than one million people.

Domesticated reindeer are part of a way of life for many who herd them, eat their meat and use them for transportation.

Hunting brigades will be provided with ammunition, spare parts and fuel to get around the region, where roads are scarce, state broadcaster Vesti reported. There will be monetary rewards for each wolf shot and three prizes of the equivalent of about $33,000 each for the top hunters.

According to Vesti, wolves killed 16,111 domesticated reindeer and 313 domesticated horses last year, costing herders a total of about $5-million in losses.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta said the number of reindeer killed by wolves in Sakha was about four times that of 2006, and that hunters in the region killed 730 wolves last year.

Wolf attacks on domesticated reindeer have increased because of a decrease in the numbers of the hares and possibly other animals the predators eat, including wild reindeer, said Vladimir Krever, co-ordinator of the biodiversity-protection program at the World Wildlife Fund in Russia.

Numbers of hares and other animals fluctuate naturally as a result of many factors, including weather and die-offs that occur after populations grow too large to be sustainable, Mr. Krever said.

He said the effort to kill more wolves in Sakha this year was the result of the natural ebb and flow of wildlife populations and would not pose a serious threat to the wolf population.

"When wolves can't get enough food in the wild, they begin to causes losses to herds – in the European part of Russia, this is cows and sheep; in Yakutia, it is domesticated reindeer."

"To minimize losses to predators is a completely normal human response in such a situation," he said. "There's nothing terrible about this."

But he expressed doubt that hunters would bring the population down to 500 even with additional financial and material support, noting that traps and the use of aviation are prohibited. "To shoot that many wolves is unrealistic," he said.

But some activists were upset by the wolf hunt and circulated a petition urging Sakha authorities to call it off. The petition criticized monetary rewards, saying shooting wolves "is hardly a heroic act."

Whatever the other obstacles, hunters will face freezing cold temperatures in the giant region. The forecast high on Wednesday in Yakutsk, the regional capital, was -45.

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