A polar bear sowed panic in a remote Alaskan town on Tuesday, killing two people, according to state police. At 2:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. in mainland Spain), the Alaska State Police received a report of a polar bear attack in the town of Wales at the western end of the Seward Peninsula on the banks of the Bering Strait. separating the United States from Russia.
According to the Alaska Department of Public Safety, initial reports were that “a polar bear had entered the community and chased several residents.” The bear fatally attacked an adult female and a young male, whose ages and identities are not yet known.
A local resident shot the bear as it attacked the couple, according to official sources. “Police and the Alaska Department of Game and Fish are working to move to Wales if weather conditions permit,” adds the statement released by the authorities.
Wales is the westernmost city in the Americas. It has a population of barely 150, mostly Inupiaq aborigines, it has no nearby towns and is poorly connected.
According to the Anchorage Daily News, deadly polar bear attacks are extremely rare in Alaska. In 1990, a polar bear killed a man in Point Lay, North Slope. Biologists later said the animal was showing signs of starvation. In 1993, a polar bear burst through an Air Force radar station window on the North Slope, severely maiming a 55-year-old mechanic who survived the attack.
Polar bears are about the same size as large brown bears, according to the Alaska Department of Fisheries. The largest males can weigh over 1,700 pounds (770 kilos), but averages are 600-1,200 pounds (272-544 kilos) and 2.4-3 meters in length. Adult females weigh between 180 and 320 kilos.
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A 2017 report by The Wildlife Society described recorded polar bear attacks as “extremely rare”. Between 1870 and 2014, researchers documented in a database 73 wild polar bear attacks spread across polar bear territories (Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States), causing 20 deaths and 63 injuries. “It has been found that adult male polar bears under nutritional stress are most likely to pose a threat to human security. Attacks by adult females were rare and most were attributed to the defense of the young,” the study concludes.
The report notes that bears acted as predators in most attacks, and that almost all attacks involved a maximum of two people. “Increased concern for the safety of humans and bears is warranted given projections that bears will spend more time on land near humans due to habitat loss from sea ice,” added he added.
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