Rare polar bear appears on Iceland’s shores, police shoot it dead

LONDON — A rare polar bear that was spotted outside a cottage in a remote village in Iceland was shot and killed by police after it was deemed a threat, authorities said Friday.

The bear was killed Thursday afternoon in northwestern Iceland after police consulted with the Environment Agency, which refused to relocate the animal, Westfjords police chief Helgi Jensson told The Associated Press.

”It’s not something we like to do,” Jensson said. ”In this case, as you can see in the photo, the bear was very close to the summer cottage. There was an older woman there.”

The owner, who was alone, became frightened and locked herself upstairs as the bear rummaged through her trash, Jensson said. She contacted her daughter in Reykjavik, the capital, by satellite link and called for help.

”She stayed there,” Jensson said, adding that other summer residents from the area had already returned home. ”She knew about the danger.”

Polar bears are not native to Iceland, but they sometimes come ashore after traveling on ice floes from Greenland, according to Anna Sveinsdóttir, director of scientific collections at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. A number of icebergs have been spotted off the northern coast in the past few weeks.

Although polar bear attacks on humans are extremely rare, a 2017 study published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin found that the loss of sea ice due to global warming has forced more hungry bears onto land, increasing the risk of conflict with humans and increasing the risk to both parties.

Of the 73 documented polar bear attacks between 1870 and 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States, in which 20 people were killed and 63 injured, 15 occurred in the last five years of that period.