By Daily Caller (World News) | Created at 2024-09-23 17:19:34 | Updated at 2024-09-30 05:21:28
6 days ago
September 23, 2024 12:51 PM ET
Police shot a polar bear dead Thursday afternoon outside a cottage in a remote Icelandic village, according to multiple reports.
Westfjords Police Chief Helgi Jensson told The Associated Press (AP) that his department consulted with the Environment Agency, which declined to relocate the bear, before deciding to execute it.
“It’s not something we like to do,” Jensson told the outlet. “In this case, as you can see in the picture, the bear was very close to a summer house. There was an old woman in there,” the police chief said.
He added that the cottage owner locked herself in the house and called her daughter for help as the bear rummaged through her garbage.(RELATED: Two Polar Bears Maul Worker To Death At Remote Radar Site In Canada)
“She stayed there,” Jensson said. “She knew the danger.”
Polar bears are not native to Iceland but do on rare occasions come ashore via ice floes from Greenland, Anna Sveinsdóttir, director of scientific collections at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, said.
A polar bear was spotted on the shores of Iceland for the first time in 8 years. It was shot dead by police. https://t.co/vysZmgoMCe
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 23, 2024
The deceased polar bear was the first such bear discovered in Iceland since 2016. There are a total of 600 recorded sightings of polar bears on the island since the ninth century. Polar bear attacks on humans are considered rare.
A 2017 study by the Wildlife Society Bulletin documented 73 attacks on humans between 1870 to 2014 worldwide, “which resulted in 20 human fatalities and 63 human injuries.” The study found that the attacks were linked to “nutritionally stressed adult male polar bears.”
