“A bear entered a camp this morning around 8:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. Argentina time) and wounded a French woman in the arm”said the local police chief, Stein Olav Bredli, according to the AFP news agency.
In this regard, he added that “His life is not in danger” and explained that “there were shots against the polar bear, which was scared and left the place”Bredli noted.
The tourist was evacuated by helicopter to the hospital in Longyearbyen, the main city of the archipelago, and the injured animal was later located by the authorities who, due to the magnitude of its injuries, finished it off.
In Svalbard, it is mandatory to carry a rifle when leaving urban communities to be prepared in case of a chance encounter with a bear, they said.
According to a 2015 count, about 1,000 polar bears live in the Norwegian sector of the Arctic, a protected species since 1973.
Some 300 live all year round in the archipelago and some have relocated to the western part of the territory, where there is also a concentration of humans.. They had disappeared from there when hunting was still allowed.
Since 1971 there have been six deadly bear attacks, in the last one in 2020, a 38-year-old Dutchman died.
According to experts, the melting of glaciers due to global warming is depriving polar bears of their favorite hunting ground, where they feed on seals, and it is pushing them closer to human-populated areas in search of food.
Source: Ambito
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