A polar bear attacked five people in Norway Friday, killing a 17-year-old boy and sending four others to the hospital with serious injuries. The tourists, mainly 16- to 23-year-old students, were part of the British Schools Exploring Society visiting the remote arctic Svalbard archipelago and the Von Postbreen glacier, which is about halfway between Norway’s mainland and the North pole. The victim was British, and the injured men were the trip leaders.
Experts are saying that dwindling ice is forcing the polar bears to come farther inland to look for food.
July 27th, 2011
There was a P.bear sighting across the fjord about a mile away. Unfortunately a Westerly wind and freak climatic events have led to an unprecedented amount of ice in the fjord meaning we are marooned here for the time being.
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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Steve,
I think you have a good point. No matter WHAT happens in the arctic in the future tourism will ensure that Polar bears don’t starve!
Yes, because the eco-tourists will have rifles and will kill all the bears – out of a desire to protect them. This is the second incident in the last few weeks where a bear got put down because of eco-tourists being where they had no business.
I have never understood the rationale of killing animals for doing what is in their nature. I remember a polar bear being killed because some boys sneaked into it’s enclosure and he killed one of them, back when I lived in Brooklyn
I believe the rationale is that one wild animals gain a taste for humans, they keep it with them.
Suyts,
Yes that is the rationale. How true it is I don’t know, but it seems a shame to kill an animal for doing what it is designed to do.
I remember being in Australia at an animal park and seeing the keepers feeding the animals dead baby chicks. We asked why dead chicks, and were told that people get too upset watching the predators eat live prey. They had to TRAIN some of the owls to eat dead meat, because they are only used to catching live prey. I am a vegetarian and I thought it was funny (and sad) that the meat eaters (99% of australians at the time) couldn’t stomach seeing the real world as it actually is.
Liberal and conservative culture have conspired to make nature appear to be a fantasy, part of that is where wild Polar bears are sweet and cuddly.
It is obvious the Bear had to move a good distance “Inland” to look for “FOOD”, It would be like me walking to my neighbors garden across the road.
How the hell do you get yourself close enough to a Polar Bear to get attacked? Don’t you try to stay away from them?
Polar bears move a lot faster, and humans a lot slower than most people think
The lack of general ice meant the polar bear had to eat young men. The increased local ice meant the young men could not escape by rowing, fortified with scotish whisky.
Andy
The ice has teleconections to Siberia