A French woman was hurt by a polar bear at a campsite in the Svalbard Archipelago, north of Norway, and the bear was killed. The victim's arm was injured before the bear entered the tent.
A polar bear may need to be put down because of a human-polar bear encounter, which could result in someone getting hurt or killed.
Polar bear attacked French woman
Hans-Jurgen Mager/Unsplash
The regional governor of Norway's remote Arctic Svalbard Islands reported that a polar bear injured a French tourist on Monday after attacking a woman at a campsite, as per DW.
Authorities added that the incident's injuries were not life-threatening. Later, the bear was slain. The 25-person tour group included the woman, and they were camped out at Sveasletta in the heart of the Svalbard archipelago. The distance between it and the Norwegian mainland is more than 800 kilometers (500 miles).
Authorities flew to the scene by helicopter as soon as they learned about the attack, according to chief superintendent Stein Olav Bredli.
The arm of the French woman was hurt. The polar bear was frightened away from the scene after a shot was fired at it, he claimed. The woman was then helicoptered to Longyearbyen's hospital, the biggest town on the Svalbard archipelago.
The victim was described as a woman in her 40s by Svalbardposten, the primary newspaper on the Arctic archipelago. According to the newspaper's report, the woman suffered only minor injuries as a result of the incident.
The animal, meanwhile, came out severely hurt, and after a professional evaluation, it was put to death. It was unclear precisely how the bear was put to death.
Even though they are uncommon, bear encounters do occasionally happen in the area. As aggressive animals, polar bears have indeed been known to be aggressive and even kill humans. Polar bears have been seen hunting for humans as prey when food is in short supply.
Since 2005, polar bears have been listed on the Red List as being vulnerable. A rapid decline in sea ice is anticipated to result in a significant decrease in the number of polar bears over the following decades, as per Norwegian Polar Detective.
Polar bears spend the majority of their lives hunting seals on sea ice, so their survival will also be impacted by sea ice loss.
Polar bear experts are uneasy and concerned about human-polar bear conflicts because there is little evidence to date that the issue will go away.
The tourism industry is expanding north, and predictions for warming in the Arctic point to a drastic loss of polar bear habitat.
Since the 1960s, the Norwegian Polar Institute has been studying and keeping track of polar bears in the Norwegian Arctic. Over the years, the institute has learned a lot about the species.
Study on diseases, pollutants, demographics and the effects of climate change is now given priority in Svalbard. Each year, 50-100 polar bears are tagged or recaptured.
Some of them are fitted with satellite transmitters that provide information on their annual migration patterns, and samples were obtained from them for various analyses.
The impact of ice conditions on the number of fertile females and also the survival of polar bears of various ages will receive special attention in the upcoming years.
