Five scientists based at a weather station on Troynoy island, in the Kara sea north of Siberia, have been encircled by 10 adult bears and some cubs for almost two weeks, the Russian news agency TASS reported on Monday.
Advertisement
The drama began at the Arctic weather station on Troynoy Island on August 31, when a polar bear killed one of the two dogs there, according to Vadim Plotnikov, head of the station.
Five meteorologists are stuck in a weather station on a remote arctic island in Russian Federation after a dozen polar bears chose to call their doorstep home.
They were “beseiged”, Plotnikov said.
“We had to stop some of the meteorological observations”, he said.
Five people, two married couples among them, work there.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature recognizes 19 subpopulations of polar bears (scientific name Ursus maritimus), all of which “live throughout the ice-covered waters of the circumpolar Arctic”. They are quite aggressive, said the scientist, who shared that three times their engineer has fired a small flare pistol but it did not scare polar bear even a bit. The ship, carrying more flares and dogs, is still about a month away from the island, the meteorologists said.
Polar bears, which can weigh more than 1,000 pounds, are protected in Russian Federation and there are no plans to kill any of the animals. However, it will take a month for the aid to reach the island in the Kara Sea.
It sounds like the plot for a zombie movie, but the station’s invaders are polar bears that one Russian scientist says have been driven to desperate measures by the effects of climate change. They were under direction from Russian authorities to keep themselves safe, but also to avoid harming the polar bears, which are a threatened species. They also replaced the meteorologists’ supply of signal flares to use, should the bears come back, and gave them puppies to train as future guard dogs. He added that the bears are expected to leave the island around late October or early November as they search for food. At the same time, Donskoi emphasized the need to spare the bears.
Advertisement
Melting sea ice and shifting patterns in the populations of the polar bears’ marine prey stoke the desperation of bears, which are being forced to travel farther for food.
