A man was killed last week (August 8) by two polar bears on a small island off the east coast of Baffin Island in Nunavut, multiple reports have confirmed — although precious few details have been provided, other than that one of the bears was killed immediately afterward. The name of the victim (an employee of a government radar site) has not been released, and no information on the condition of the bears or the circumstances of the attack have been provided. Major news outlets have had to pad their stories with details from previous attacks and other filler.
However, an attack by two bears sounds suspiciously like the sow and half-grown cub involved in another fatal attack in 2018 in Foxe Basin, even though adult females with cubs are one of the least common perpetrators of serious attacks on people.
Why are officials not saying if this was yet another fatal assault by an adult female with a cub, even five days after the attack? Perhaps because they think it makes the bears “look bad” and strengthens the Nunavut case for recently including equal numbers of females and males in their hunting quotas? Time will tell.
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