Police have shot and killed a polar bear that came ashore in northwestern Iceland, the first sighting of a polar bear there since 2016. It might have hitched a ride from Greenland on a floating iceberg.
polar bears will absolutely hunt humans for food without a second thought. And you will not be able to outrun them or scare them away.
This one came quite close to homes, which is a reason for almost all towns with polar bears in the area to shoot them.
That this bear was the first in quite a while is a sad thing, but it’s understandable that the town doesn’t want a bear mauling people for a snack
See also: The town where guns are required
If it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, lie down. If it’s white, good night.
Grizzly bears are brown.
You lie down in hopes that it will not perceive you as food and once it has determine you are no longer a threat, it will hopefully leave you with lots of wounds requiring stiches, but not completely dead.
This reads like it’s justified.
We destroy their habitats so they need to come to us to survive only to get killed by us.
Sounds like we are just bad guys.
Read the article. They don’t even go onto that. They have a shoot on sight policy regardless.
Yes. Because they’re not going to wait until someone got turned into kibble for something to do
If you can see a polar bear it’s a threat.
They really aren’t like other bear species. They are an apex predator in an area where basically nothing other than another polar bear can even harm them. They see most things as food, including humans.
As a bonus, Iceland has a pretty wonky ecosystem that needs protecting as is and polar bears aren’t native to the island. They have to swim extreme distances to get there, making relocation extremely difficult and expensive, plus if they leave it be it will entirely disrupt other wildlife in the area, to say nothing of the human population.
As others have said, it sucks that it got shot, but Iceland especially has very limited options on how else to deal with it. Shoot on sight is, unfortunately, a very reasonable policy for them.
