Human food waste ‘threat’ to polar bears

PARIS: The invasion of a remote Russian village by dozens of ravenous polar bears three years ago captured headlines around the world, with images of groups of animals gorging on rubbish in an open garbage dump.

Scientists and conservationists warned on Wednesday that it was just one of a growing number of incidents showing the threat food waste poses to the at-risk animals. Polar bears are acutely threatened by climate change, with the Arctic region warming about three times faster than the global average, meaning there is less sea ice that the animals rely on to hunt for food.

"We´ve been seeing this slow and steady increase in negative human polar bear interactions, fuelled largely by loss of sea ice pushing more bears onshore for longer periods and in more places," said Geoff York, Senior Director of Conservation at Polar Bears International.

In the new analysis, researchers looked at how discarded food, particularly in garbage dumps, is drawing polar bears towards human communities and into danger. "We know from the brown and black bear world in Europe and North America that dumps are a huge problem for bears. Human food is a huge problem for bears," said York, who co-authored the report in the conservation journal Oryx.

The report draws together a number of case studies in recent years and calls for greater awareness of the risks and better waste management in Arctic communities. These include isolated incidents where one or two bears approached villages or encampments -- sometimes being shot after attacking local people -- and much larger congregations.

In Kaktovik, Alaska, the protected beach dumping site for the remnants of bowhead whales, which the Inupiat community has traditionally hunted, attracts as many as 90 polar bears from up to 160 kilometres (a hundred miles) each autumn.

The authors said the dramatic scenes in the Russian village of Belushya Guba in 2019, where more than 50 bears were drawn to an open dump on a bad ice year, were an extreme example of what can happen when sites are left unsecured.