 Despite making a life's work of harassing poachers and monitoring bears, Nikolayenko was a polarising figure within the naturalist community, which had an institutionally unfavourable view of his proactive approach to monitoring bears.His overt familiarity with his subject went against the grain of the more passive method known in the field as "separation", which is largely the consensus in ethologist circles.Nikolayenko insisted that he never underestimated the potential for ferocity amongst bears, and resisted the urge to ascribe human emotions to them.