A rare polar bear that was spotted in a remote village in Iceland was shot by police after being considered a threat, authorities have said.
The bear was killed in the north-west tip of the country after police consulted the national environment agency, which declined to have the animal relocated, according to the Westfjords police chief, Helgi Jensson.
“It’s not something we like to do,” Jensson said. “In this case … the bear was very close to a summer house. There was an old woman in there.”
The owner, who was alone, was frightened and locked herself upstairs as the bear rummaged through her garbage, Jensson said. She contacted her daughter in Reykjavik, the capital, by satellite link, and called for help.
“She stayed there,” Jensson said, adding that other summer residents in the area had gone home. “She knew the danger.”
Polar bears are not native to Iceland but occasionally come ashore after travelling on ice floes from Greenland, according to Anna Sveinsdóttir, the director of scientific collections at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. Many icebergs have been spotted off the north coast in the last few weeks.
Although attacks by polar bears on humans are extremely rare, a study in Wildlife Society Bulletin in 2017 said that the loss of sea ice from global warming has led more hungry bears to land, creating a greater chance of conflicts with humans and increasing the risk to both.
Of 73 documented attacks by polar bears from 1870 to 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States — which killed 20 people and injured 63 — 15 occurred in the final five years of that period.
The bear shot on Thursday was the first one seen in the country since 2016. Sightings are relatively rare, with only 600 recorded in Iceland since the ninth century.
While the bears are a protected species in Iceland and it is forbidden to kill one at sea, they can be killed if they pose a threat to humans or livestock.
After two bears arrived in 2008, a debate over killing the threatened species led the environment minister to appoint a taskforce to study the issue, the institute said. The taskforce concluded that killing vagrant bears was the most appropriate response.
The group said the non-native species posed a threat to people and animals, and the cost of returning them to Greenland, about 180 miles away, was exorbitant. It also found there was a healthy bear population in east Greenland, from where any bear was likely to have come.
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The young bear, which weighed between 150 and 200kg, will be taken to the institute to be studied. Scientists took samples from the bear on Friday.
They will be checking for parasites and infections and evaluating its physical condition, such as the health of its organs and percentage of body fat, Sveinsdóttir said. The pelt and skull may be preserved for the institute’s collection.
A coast guard helicopter surveyed the area where the bear was found to look for others but did not find any, police said.
After the shot bear was taken away, the woman who reported it decided to stay longer in the village, Jensson said.