On Thursday, August 8, two polar bears killed an employee at a remote radar station off the coast of Baffin Island in Arctic Canada.
The incident took place on uninhabited Brevoort Island. The radar station is part of Canada and the U.S.’s North Warning System, which is operated by the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
The Nasittuq Corporation, which maintains the stations, has not released many details, including the name of the deceased. It did say that one of the bears was later killed.
At permanent arctic camps, such as mining operations, an armed polar bear monitor from one of the nearby communities is always on watch. But Nasittuq typically maintains these automated stations seasonally, for just a few days at a time. Some years ago, when I accompanied Nasittuq workers to another North Warning station, we did not have a bear monitor with us. But employees never ventured away from the buildings, except in a vehicle.
Polar bears tend to be solitary, but young polar bears who have recently left their mothers will hang together for a while. In 1983, two starving three-year-old polar bears attacked oil workers in the Beaufort Sea. One killed the foreman of a seismic camp; the other climbed aboard a crew barge and killed an 18-year-old driller. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police later shot both bears.
There are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide. Two-thirds of them live in Arctic Canada.
