Young mother and 1-year-old son killed by polar bear

WALES, Alaska. The polar bear chased several residents around a tiny, isolated Alaska Native whaling village, killing two people in an extremely rare attack before another member of the community shot the bear, authorities said.

The fatal wounding of a woman and a boy occurred on Tuesday in Wales, an isolated Bering Strait coastal community located on the westernmost tip of the North American mainland – about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Russia. existing with polar bears.

As in many remote Alaskan villages, the predominantly Inupiat community of about 150 organizes patrols when bears are expected in the city, from July to early November, before the sea ice forms and the bears go to the frozen ground to hunt seals. .

That makes what happened this week almost unheard of because polar bears are usually far out on the ice in the dead of winter and don’t come close to villages, said Geoff York, senior director of conservation at Polar Bear International, a discussion group. The last fatal encounter with a polar bear in Alaska was in 1990.

“I would walk around Wales probably without any (bear) deterrents because it’s a historically safe time of year,” said Yorke, who has years of experience studying polar bears. “You don’t expect to meet bears because they will hunt seals on the sea ice and do their thing.”

It’s unclear if this attack was climate change related, but it’s in line with what’s expected as the Arctic continues to warm four times as much as the rest of the Earth, changing the ecosystem in ways that are still not fully understood, Yorke said. However, this particular bear is a member of a population that is doing pretty well, said Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta and an expert on polar bears.

Alaska scientists from the USGS found in 2019 that changes in sea ice habitat coincided with evidence of increased land use by polar bears and an increased chance of encountering polar bears.

“We are anticipating and accidentally seeing a surge in human-polar bear encounters. Fortunately, most of them do not end in injury or death, but the likelihood of this happening seems to be growing, ”said York.

The names of the victims and other details of the attack have not been released. Alaska State Troopers and Alaska Department of Fish and Wildlife officials planned to fly to Wales’ gravel airstrip as soon as the weather allowed.

Wales is just over 100 miles (161 km) northwest of Nome. The village can be reached by plane and boat, including barges delivering household goods. Winter trails provide snowmobile access to other communities and hunting grounds. ATVs are used for non-winter hunting and fishing trips.

According to Yorke, polar bears are at the top of the food chain and view humans as a source of food.

In a report he co-authored entitled “Understanding Polar Bear Attacks”, which detailed fatal encounters with polar bears, it was found that most of the incidents involved either juvenile bears, usually males, who are hungry all the time, or elderly bears that are injured or sick and have difficulty eating. calories.

“Both of these types of bears are more risk-averse, as we have seen here in Wales,” Yorke said.

Unlike brown or black bears, polar bears do not hibernate in winter. Only pregnant females enter snow dens, and then only for breeding.

All other polar bears are outside the home, usually on sea ice, where their prey is available all year round.

The Alaska Nannut Co-management Council, which was formed to represent “the collective voice of Alaska Natives in the co-management of polar bears,” says on its website that polar bears near or entering villages are an ongoing safety issue for communities in the area. polar bears.

The group notes several polar bear patrol programs in Alaska, including in Wales, which it says is seeking funding to sustain operations, and in Diomede Native Village, where it says patrols operate mostly in the winter to protect children. going to and from school.

Yorke, who has worked in the Arctic for about 30 years, 21 of them in Alaska, said the Wales community has long been involved in establishing a polar bear patrol program and taking action to keep polar bears out of the community.

“It just seems to be one of those terrible times where, despite doing the right thing, we had a bear, which was an exception at a time of the year when you never expected it to happen,” he said.

Desrocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, said the site of the attack is far south of the distribution of polar bears, but their presence there is not abnormal.

The bear belongs to a population of polar bears in the Chukchi Sea that is doing well in the face of climate change, Desrochers said. This means the attack may have been the result of the bear being attracted to attractants such as food or garbage rather than climate change, he said.

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea, east of the Chukchi Sea population, are in the worst condition, Desroche said.

In this case, although there is ice in the Chukchi and North Bering Seas, the quality of this ice is not so well known. More importantly, Yorke said they don’t know what’s going on under the ice or what the availability of seals and other prey for polar bears is.

The change also occurs in the winter, when people thought they were safe from polar bears on the coast, Yorke said.

“Communities may no longer exist,” he said.