Tag Archives: damage

Netflix polar bear star dies in Svalbard days after being tranquilized; her orphaned cub is shot

Posted on April 23, 2023 | Comments Off on Netflix polar bear star dies in Svalbard days after being tranquilized; her orphaned cub is shot

Early in the morning on Good Friday (7 April), a mature polar bear sow with a cub at heal was chased with snowmobiles away from a recreation area used by locals on the west coast but drowned after she escaped into the water. Her cub, likely a yearling male, attacked authorities trying to retrieve her body and was shot.

It turns out this 17 year old female was well known to locals and is considered Svalbard’s most famous polar bear. They call her ‘Frost.’ She featured in the 2019 Attenborough-narrated Netflix documentary Our Planet, in the sequence showing the stalk of a newborn ringed seal pup (see screencap above), which was likely filmed in early 2018 after the cliff-falling walrus scenes in Russia that were filmed in October 2017. h/t Sheila.

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Inuit in Arctic Canada now observing higher numbers of polar bears, says government report

Posted on January 4, 2023 | Comments Off on Inuit in Arctic Canada now observing higher numbers of polar bears, says government report

A 2021 publication by the government of Canada released last month called Species at Risk in Nunavut says the region is “now observing higher numbers of polar bears“, and that management goals are “more focused on maintaining or reducing numbers in communities and in sensitive areas (i.e. bird colonies)“. Local Inuit are said to be “concerned about the increasing number of encounters and property damages” caused by polar bears.

Polar bear in Arviat, Nunavut, 3 October 2022. Chris Mikijuniak photo.

Polar bears in Canada are considered a species of ‘special concern’ (COSEWIC 2018), not threatened as they are in the USA. See the map of Nunavut below.

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Polar bear damage to parked military helicopter shows their immense power

Posted on October 1, 2020 | Comments Off on Polar bear damage to parked military helicopter shows their immense power

A polar bear punched out the window of a parked Royal Canadian Air Force search and rescue helicopter on 16 September in northern Labrador, which should be a reminder that these bears are extremely powerful and potentially dangerous.

If you ever thought you would be safe in a cabin or vehicle if a polar bear really wanted in, you might want to think again and remember that residents of the Arctic put up with this risk of polar bear attack, intrusion and damage all year long (Crockford 2019). And it’s not because the bears are simply ‘curious’.

Two photos below from Svalbard: of a bear that climbed onboard a boat moored offshore in 2019 while its occupants had lunch on the beach (damaging the hydraulic steering, vinyl seats, heating system, canopy, and an inflatable raft), and of a cabin ransacked by a polar bear in 2017 after it ripped the door off its hinges. Since it is my understanding that cabin owners in Svalbard are not permitted to leave stored food in unoccupied buildings, the attractants in these empty cabins must be other things that contain oil, like cleaning products, vinyl furniture, and candles.

 

 

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Fat polar bears causing trouble onshore in Labrador plus sightings in Newfoundland

Posted on April 17, 2019 | Comments Off on Fat polar bears causing trouble onshore in Labrador plus sightings in Newfoundland

What sounds like a mother and half-grown cub paid a visit to a cabin outside Black Tickle, Labrador and frightened the residents trapped inside. The aggressive female was part of at least 10 bears seen around the community on 14 April 2019 and photos of one of them show a bear in excellent condition. A bear in good condition was also spotted on the north coast of Newfoundland over the weekend, delivered to land by sea ice that’s moving back into the area after winds blew it offshore last month.

Batteau-labrador Carrie Dyson photo 17 April 2019

Near Black Tickle Labrador, mid-April 2019. Carrie Dyson photo.

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Southern Beaufort polar bear attack far from the Alaskan coast: another winter example

Posted on January 15, 2019 | Comments Off on Southern Beaufort polar bear attack far from the Alaskan coast: another winter example

A man from Arctic Village (Alaska), out checking his trap-line, killed a polar bear at his cabin when it came after him: only odd things were it was the first week of January and the cabin was more than 100 miles south of the Beaufort Sea coast.

polar_bear_in fall terry debruyne_usfws nov 10 2010_w label_sm

Winter is hard for polar bears, as I’ve mentioned before: it’s cold, dark, and hard to find seals. Most bears are at their lightest weight at the end of winter (March). Looking for food in the dead of winter, the bears can be very destructive as well as dangerous. See previous posts here, here, here, and here.

The map below shows how far south Arctic Village is from the Beaufort coast. This hunter is lucky he had his wits about him and his gun handy, because he came awfully close to being a polar bear’s dinner.

arctic village ak map google

Here’s an excerpt of the story (my bold): “Polar bear encounter reported in Arctic Village, many miles south of normal range” (KTOO, Ravenna Koenig, 15 January 2019):

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