Polar Bears Kill Worker in Remote Radar Site in Canada
Polar bear attacks on humans are rare, but last week’s was the second fatal encounter since 2023.
A polar bear near Churchill, Manitoba, in August 2022.Credit...Olivier Morin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By
Johnny Diaz
Aug. 12, 2024
Two polar bears killed a worker at a remote radar site in the Canadian Arctic last week in one of the rare deadly polar bear attacks on humans, the facility’s operator said.
The encounter took place on Thursday at a work station on Brevoort Island in Nunavut, a sparsely populated territory in Canada,
according to a statement by Nasittuq Corporation, a company that maintains and manages facilities in northern Canada.
The site of the attack is an outpost of the North Warning System, a string of air-defense radar stations operated by
Nasittuq. The system protects North American airspace by detecting aircraft and cruise missiles flying within its radar range,
Nasittuq’s website says.
The company said on Friday that its employees responded to the attack and “one of the animals was put down.” The company did not describe the circumstances in the episode and said it was working with local authorities to conduct an investigation.
“The safety and well-being of our employees is our highest priority, and we are deeply committed to ensuring a safe working environment,” the company added.
Nasittuq did not release the name of the employee who was killed.
Polar bear attacks on humans are rare, but last week’s was the second death since 2023.
Last year, a
polar bear killed a woman and her year-old son in a remote village in western Alaska after it chased “multiple residents,’’ officials said at the time. The attack took place near a school in Wales, a remote village on the western edge of the Seward Peninsula.
The animals are more likely to attack a person when they are “nutritionally stressed” and in “below-average body condition,” according to
a 2017 study published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin.
The same study reported that from 1870 to 2014, there were 73 confirmed polar bear attacks in five countries with territory adjacent to the Arctic Ocean: the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark, which includes Greenland. Those attacks resulted in 20 deaths, according to the study.
A half-century ago, those countries established a treaty to protect the species by establishing limits on hunting.
Polar bears are considered threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because the sea ice that they rely on for hunting, feeding and migrating is shrinking because of climate change.