A polar bear that drifted to Iceland was shot dead after rummaging through a garbage can near a villa. According to foreign reports including The Guardian on the 20th local time, a 150-200kg young polar bear rummaging through a garbage can near a villa in a village in Westfjords, Iceland, was shot by the police on the 19th. At the time, an elderly woman in the villa locked the door in fear and hid. The police decided to shoot the polar bear as they deemed it a threat to humans.
Although polar bears are classified as a protected species in Iceland, they can be killed if they pose a threat to humans and livestock. The body of the polar bear will be transported to Reykjavik for research purposes. This is the first sighting of a polar bear in Iceland since 2016.
Experts have observed an increase in sightings of polar bears on land due to the shrinking habitats caused by global warming. There have been concerns about hungry polar bears venturing closer to human settlements, posing risks to both humans and the polar bears. Research published in a wildlife journal in 2017 documented a total of 73 cases of polar bear attacks in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and the United States between 1870 and 2014, with 15 incidents occurring in the last 5 years of the study period.