Far from worrying about wolf conservation — as is the case, though controversially, in parts of the western United States — the thinly populated region of Yakutia, like much of the rest of rural Russia, grapples with a perennial problem of excessive predation by wolves.

In announcing the state of emergency, the regional government said wolves killed about 16,000 domesticated reindeer last year and 313 horses. The wolf population was about 3,500, the government said, while ideally it should not exceed 500.

Experts say the wolf problem is not so much a matter of overpopulation as a cyclical collapse in the wolves’ primary prey, rabbits. In the remotest areas, the rabbit cycle is typically trailed by a decline in the numbers of wolves as they starve and freeze to death. But in populated areas, packs switch to livestock.

In Russia, a country with many enthusiastic hunters and lots of open space, only the most charismatic of predators — Amur snow tigers, for example — are accorded much protection. Because the wolves are not endangered and would most likely die anyway if not for the meals of livestock, conservationists generally do not object to the hunting.

Hunters cull wolves and bears by the hundreds. Sarah Palin would feel right at home with Russian wolf hunters, who generally hunt on snowmobiles, which can outpace the animals in thick winter snow. (As governor of Alaska, Ms. Palin encouraged aerial hunts, which were also preferred by the Soviet government.) Traps are sometimes used, though poisoning was outlawed in 2005.