Techotic

Police in Iceland shot a polar bear that swam more than 200 miles in near-freezing waters to reach shore, because they think it might posed a threat to humans.

The killed bear was the first polar bear to reach Iceland in 15 years. The last sighting of a polar bear in Iceland was in 1993, when sailors saw a bear swimming off the coast of Strandir. It was also killed.

The adult male, weighing 250kg, was presumed to have swum some 200 miles from Greenland, or from a distant chunk of Arctic ice, to Skagafjordur in northern Iceland.

“There was fog up in the hills and we took the decision to kill the bear before it could disappear into the fog,” said the police spokesman Petur Bjornsson.

Iceland’s environment minister, Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, gave the green light for police to shoot the bear because the correct tranquiliser would have taken 24 hours to be flown in, the Icelandic news channel Visir.is reported.

Sveinbjarnardottir’s account was disputed by the chief vet in the town of Blönduó, Egill Steingrímsson, who said he had the drugs necessary to immobilise the bear in the boot of his car. “If the narcotics gun would have been sent by plane, it would have arrived within an hour,” he said. “They could keep tabs on the bear for that long.”

Steingrímsson also criticised police for not closing a mountain road where people congregated after hearing news of the bear. “There were around 50 to 60 people there watching. The police did not have many options when the bear ran down the hill, approaching the crowd,” Steingrimsson said. “I’m very unsatisfied that the police did not try to catch it alive and did not close the road.”

[via the guardian]