Iceland police shoot polar bear

A polar bear that was seen outside a cottage in a remote village in Iceland has been shot by police after being considered a threat. The bear was killed in the northwestern Westfjords region after police contacted the Environment Agency which would not relocate the animal, according to Westfjords Police Chief Helgi Jensson.

“It’s not something we like to do,” Jensson said. “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 owner had been frightened, locking herself upstairs as the animal rummaged through her garbage, according to Jensson. She had gotten in touch with her daughter in the capital and called for help.

“She stayed there,” Jensson said, adding that other summer residents in the area had gone home. “She knew the danger.”

Polar bears are not native to Iceland but have been known to come ashore on ice floes from Greenland, according to Anna Sveinsdóttir, director of scientific collections at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. Many icebergs have been sighted off the northern coast over the past weeks.

This was the first sighting in the country since 2016. Such events are rare with only 600 recorded since the ninth century.

While polar bears are a protected species in Iceland and it is forbidden to kill one at see, they can be killed if it is determined that they present a risk either to humans or livestock. Following the arrival of two in 2008, a debate began over the killing of the endangered species, leading the environment minister to appoint a task force to study the issue. It concluded that killing the bears is the most appropriate solution.

The group said that the species can pose a threat to people as well as wildlife, being a nonnative species. It also found that the cost to return them to Greenland some 300km away was too high to justify. It also determined that there was a healthy polar bear population in Greenland where the bears would likely had come from.