Danish army threatened to kill ‘troublesome’ polar bear after series of attacks

One polar bone “problem“You are threatened with death if you approach a train station north-east of Greenland in which attacked a documentary team, the Danish army reported.

Early Monday, the animal managed to slide its head through an improperly closed window in a research room where the film crew lived, at a distance of 400 meters from the small military base in Daneborg.

According to the story of the “Arctic Command”, the Danish unit stationed there, the bear bit one of the three men on the hand before the team managed to frighten him with their alarm pistols.

First transferred to the military base, the injured documentary filmmaker must have been evacuated to Akureyri in Iceland.

The animal, to which five incidents have already been attributed, returned to the scene a few hours later. and also in the night of Monday to Tuesday, when he succeeded in breaking a window of the establishment.

“Local authorities have classified him as a problem bear, which allows him to be shot if he returns,” the Arctic Command said in a statement.

The incident comes just after Northeast Greenland suffered a heat wave, with a temperature record of around 23.4 ° C.

Experts indicate that the retreat of the sea ice, polar bear hunting ground, forces them to stay on the ground longer and causes malnutrition problems that threaten the species, already classified as vulnerable.

Although still rare, human incidents are increasing as bears move closer and closer to inhabited nuclei in search of food. according to environmentalists and authorities.

According to a study published in Nature Climate Change By July 2020, these iconic arctic white plantigrades, currently numbering 25,000, will be Endangered.

Massive thaw

Greenland suffered a heat wave last week which, with temperatures more than ten degrees above seasonal norms, caused an episode of “massive” melting of the ice sheetglaciologists have warned.

Since Wednesday, the ice cap that covers the vast arctic territory has melted some 8,000 million tonnes every day, double the average rate of the summer period, based on data from Polar Portal, a modeling tool managed by Danish research institutes.

According to a European study published in January, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will contribute to the overall sea level rise of 10 to 18 centimeters by 2100, 60% faster than the previous estimate.

The Greenland ice cap contains enough to make raise the oceans 6 to 7 meters.

(With information from AFP)

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