Polar Bear Kills Woman and Boy in Remote Alaskan Village

A polar bear killed a woman and a boy in a remote village in western Alaska on Tuesday after it chased “multiple residents,” officials said in one of the few fatal polar bear attacks to take place in the past century.

The attack occurred in the remote village of Wales, Alaska, which is on the western edge of the Seward Peninsula that juts into the Bering Sea toward Russia. About 170 people live in Wales, according to the Census Bureau, and most residents are Inupiaq.

A local resident shot and killed the polar bear as it was attacking the pair, the Alaska State Troopers said in a statement. State troopers said that they were notified of the attack at 2:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday. They did not name the victims or say whether they were related. Officials were still in the process of notifying the victims’ families of the deaths, the state troopers said on Tuesday.

State officials planned to travel to Wales as soon as weather conditions improved, the Alaska State Troopers said.

While attacks on humans are extremely rare, polar bears 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 study found that from 1870 to 2014, there were 73 confirmed polar bear attacks in five countries with territory abutting the Arctic Ocean: the United States, Norway, Canada, Russia and Denmark. Those nations created a treaty a half-century ago to protect polar bears through limits on hunting. The attacks caused the deaths of 20 people and injured 63, the study said.

Since 2000, 88 percent of polar bear attacks took place between July and December, a period that includes the warmest time of year, when sea ice shrinks, the study said.

Polar bears are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, which means they are likely to become endangered, because sea ice is declining and they depend on it for hunting, feeding and migrating. Scientists warned in 2020 that polar bears could become nearly extinct by the end of the century if global warming continued unabated.

Polar bears are a common sight in Wales, one of 15 polar bear hunting villages that are part of the Alaska Nannut Co-Management Council, an association that represents tribes that have traditionally hunted polar bears. The council provides guidance on polar bear management to the federal government.

Joseph Jessup McDermott, the council’s executive director, told The Anchorage Daily News that, unlike in other parts of Alaska where it is common to see polar bears, Wales does not have a polar bear patrol “due to lack of government funding.”

There have been few polar bear attacks in Alaska. In 1990, a polar bear killed a 28-year-old man who had been walking with his girlfriend early in the morning in Point Lay, about 300 miles north of Wales. In 1993, a 55-year-old mechanic survived a polar bear attack at Oliktok Point, an Air Force radar station nearly 700 miles north of Anchorage.

Polar bears in captivity have also attacked and killed people. In 1987, two polar bears killed an 11-year-old boy who sneaked into the bears’ enclosure in the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn. In 1982, a polar bear killed a man in the Central Park Zoo after he broke into the bear’s cage.