Polar Bear Shot Dead By Cruise Line Tour Guide

This Week I am very sad to report that a Polar bear was shot dead after attacking a cruise ship tour guide. The German cruise line Hapag-Lloyd Cruises said its ship was docked at Spitsbergen, on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, on Saturday when the bear attacked a guard hired to go on shore before passengers to ensure there aren’t any polar bears in the area. The guard failed to notice the bear which then attacked resulting in one of the other guides having to intervene, thankfully the Guards injuries were not life-threatening but it was a different outcome for the polar bear.

As climate change pushes predators closer to human habitats. Human-caused global warming is causing the Arctic sea, the bears’ habitat and hunting ground, to melt and decline. Bears spend the winter months on the ice hunting their prey but, when the ice melts each year, they’re forced onshore where they have insufficient food until the sea ice refreezes in the fall. As the temperatures in the Arctic have risen, the sea ice has begun to melt sooner and refreeze later, leaving the polar bears stranded on land for longer.

The World Wildlife Fund lists polar bears as a vulnerable species with only approximately 25,000 remaining. Polar bears are beautiful animals but the sad reality is that in order for us, humans, to view them we need to invade their habitat in some way. So is tourism once again proving Itself to be harmful to wildlife? This isn’t the first time this has happened,  Almost every year a polar bear is killed in Svalbard after encounters with humans or because of safety.