CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECT: CONFLICTS BETWEEN PEOPLE AND POLAR BEARS ON RISE, REPORT

Sat 02 October 2021:

According to Anatoly Kochnev, a biologist at the Magadan Institute for Biological Problems of the North under the Russian Academy of Sciences, the number of conflicts between polar bears and people has increased in recent years as climate change forces the animals to move closer to human settlements in search of food.

Between 1940 and 2013, scientists recorded 179 encounters between humans and polar bears in Chukotka after interviewing 73 informants from 13 settlements, according to Kochnev’s report, presented at the Polar Bear Universe international conference.

The number of encounters has been visibly on the rise since 2004, when polar bears began coming to the coast more frequently in search of food. The scientist noted that polar bears had been known to gather near large food sources, but it didn’t happen so often and the increase in sightings appears to correlate with the melting of ice in Arctic waters.

Most of the so-called conflicts which, apart from bear attacks, include instances of bear sightings near people and settlements; bears pillaging, breaking and entering into human dwellings and stealing provisions ended peacefully, Kochnev noted.

“The animals either left on their own, or people managed to drive them away. Still, in 11 cases bears wounded people or even killed them. Deadly encounters were recorded twice. In other cases, bears bit and scratched people, broke their limbs and ribs, in one case a bear bit off a person’s ear and flayed the skin from their face,” the scientist said.

However, bears themselves are far more likely to suffer in conflicts with humans 47 such cases were registered, which amounts to 33% of the total number of conflicts, Kochnev added. In those 47 encounters, 56 bears were reportedly killed; in other cases bears fled after being wounded.

In one case, locals killed two polar bears after they had dug bodies out of fresh graves in a cemetery and eaten them, Kochnev said. Locals usually view any encounter with a bear outside of a settlement as a confrontation, even if there is no interaction, and in at least 50% of the cases the situation is resolved by shooting the bear, the study showed.

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