A young, male polar bear was discovered in northern Iceland this morning.
He had, almost certainly, got stuck on an ice floe that broke off the east Greenland pack and drifted to Iceland, where he swam to land.
Video of what follows - not for the squeamish
Seriously - if you are a sensitive sort, do not click through to watch the video.
The bear was spotted near a farm, wandering around about a kilometer from the road. Polar bears are not endemic in Iceland, but strays drifting over on ice are not uncommon, even nowadays, and were more common still in the 19th C and early 20th C when arctic ice tended to come closer and for longer. In particular the great "ice winters" of 1880-1881 and 1917-1918.
It is illegal to hunt polar bears in Iceland, but they may, by law, be put down if they threaten people or farm animals.
Photo from Vísir
Police were called in, and decided to shoot the bear, because fog was moving in and they were concerned about public safety, especially with the flash crowd of onlookers.
There is an interesting debate in Iceland over this, with many people arguing the road should have been closed and people moved out.
The bear would likely have been hungry, and I'm not sure how local farmers would have felt about this - their sheep would certainly have been likely fodder, and historically they as well would be at risk.
One of these damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't situations.
The poor bear had nowhere to go.
The plan is to embalm and stuff it.
Why didn't they sedate it. Apparantly they called in to the chief veterinarian and were told that there was no supply of the sedative required to knock it out. They further discovered that there was no rifle in the county that could fire the sedative darts.
That, I gather, settled the issue.
On past occasions they have managed to sedate and capture polar bears. But, a lot of the time they are shot on sight.
The minister for the environment is going to hold an enquiry, see if the framework for sedation and capture can be made the standard operating policy.
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What a shame. If this makes the German news (Germans are currently in love with the baby ice bears Knut in Berlin and Flocke in Nürnberg) you'll have boycotts of Iceland and Icelandic products up the wazoo.
You can't, like, fly in sedation? Capture the bear and put him in a zoo? Give him some fish? Must be lots around up north. Keep him off the sheep-and-farmer diet.
Nasty, really nasty.
And of course it's much easier for us advanced humans to kill a member of an endangered species(!) than it is to trap it, feed it, and repatriate it.
Well, a thousand years of cultural evolution of:
"Look! A Polar Bear! Quick, kill it before it eats us!"
are hard to overcome.
Getting a rifle that could shoot sedative darts would have taken a few hours, just drive it in from town.
If it is really true that there was no (or not enough) sedative for this in the whole country, which is what the chief vetenerian said in an in interview, then we are looking at 1-2 days to get a sedative.
Polar bears have been sedated and captured in Iceland in recent decades - some bad planning if there was no sedative stock. Which I gather is to be solved with the environment ministry inquiry.
But, the deciding factor seems to have been that the fog was coming in and they were going to lose the bear, and it was in habited areas. That clinched it for the local police.
And if it had killed a person, the police would have been crucified.
This is terribly sad. It also reminds me of George Orwell's essay about shooting an elephant...