On board was a VIP delegation led by Igor Farkhutdinov, the governor of Sakhalin All 20 aboard were killed. Pending the inquiry, both Krechet's flying license and Kovalenkov's personal one were suspended.In the meantime, a new force had emerged A mini-oligarch had come to Kamchatka. If Kovalenkov embodied the old Soviet ways, Stanislav Belan personified the new breed of Russian entrepreneur - many of them fluent in Western finance, pedigreed with MBAs, and protected by foreign passports.In 2002, Belan had created Bel-Kam-Tour, advertising it as a purveyor of "VIP tourism'' on Kamchatka Things did not get off to an auspicious start Bel-Kam-Tour's first hotel burned down But it had been rebuilt, and another would open soon. All winter, the locals joked, Kovalenkov, had been in hibernation.

There'd been an accident: in August 2003, an Mi-8 headed for the Kuril Islands, southwest of Kamchatka, came into heavy fog and crashed. He'd been seized by a new idea - a vaguely articulated dream to start a foundation that could give the bears a safe future. Half a million dollars a year, he reckoned, could lock up the whole reserve. Russell already had a plan to start over: he would turn his old cabin into a rehabilitation facility. He would raise the cubs we'd seen at the zoo.To an outsider, the scheme may have seemed delusional, but sitting in the deafening Mi-2, it felt entirely within reach I looked hard and saw Russell for the first time. Here was a self-made naturalist, all alone in his 64th year, but more determined than ever to save a slice of the world's remaining wilderness - not, truth be told, so that humans could delight in its wonders, but to ensure the survival of his truest friend on earth.Back in PK, Russell landed hard.

He knew that, unlike the international conservation groups, he didn't have the clout to get funding from the UN's Development Programme. To save Kamchatka's bears, he now was convinced, the programme would have to be home-grown and Russian-run.In fact, in the months he'd been gone, a new order had quietly emerged, one in which he'd have more of a chance. The four rangers, a scruffy lot who did not inspire confidence, scrambled to fetch us on snowmobiles.The snow was too deep to hike, so we again took to the sky. Suddenly, not in minutes but in seconds, bears were everywhere, the dark centrepieces of the white landscape First one boulder came to life, then another. As we circled up high over the woods, the windscreen filled with a gorgeous female clambering up the ridge Two cubs scampered behind, struggling in the snow.