Polar Bear Attacks Youth Group in Norway
A polar bear killed a British tourist and injured four others in an attack on a picturesque island in Norway, reports said.
Sky News reported that the five people were traveling with the British Schools Exploring Society, an adventure travel group for 16-25 year-olds.
"It was an organized group. They had a camp set up and this attack happened in the camp," The deputy governor Lars Erik Alfheim told Sky News.
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"We deployed a helicopter with medical and police personnel, upon arrival one person was declared dead and four people injured.”
The injured tourists are being treated at University hospital in Tromso.
The attack occurred in the Svalbard islands, an archipelago a few miles off the coast of Norway. The area is a popular adventure travel spot and the islands’ tourism website boasts it contains “3000 polar bears, 2500 human.”
According to one local, polar bear attacks have been on the rise in recent years.
"It's not been the first time,” Liv Rose Flygel, 55, an artist and airport worker who lives near the hospital, told The Guardian.
“Last summer a man was attacked by a polar bear and there have also been attacks on a man from Austria and a girl. Only the man in the attack last summer survived. He was taken in the mouth of the bear and his friend ran after it and shot it.”
"The problem is when the ice goes the bears lose their way and cannot catch food,” she added. “People don't really how dangerous they are; one came down to the sea recently and people were running down to take pictures."
Scientists agree with Flygel. The melting of the ice caps has caused a decrease in seals, which are the polar bears’ primary source of food. The reduction in seals has had a dramatic effect on the polar bears, causing them to travel longer distances for food, coming into contact with humans as a result. They have even been reported to resorting to cannibalism to survive.
The USA’s National Wildlife Federation estimates that melting ice caps will cause two thirds of the polar bear population will die off by 2050.
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