How Hungry Polar Bears Are Bad News for Humanity

What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic

The latest issue of Need to Know: Science & Insight looks at how a melting Arctic is really screwing up our weather. It’s also about how polar bears’ hunting technique relies on a freezing cold Arctic. And how I became polar bear bait.

Some 1200 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle, I was alone on a glacier, unarmed and buried up to my waist in snow. While struggling in the deep snow I realized it didn’t matter that I was breaking the law since a polar bear was way more likely to find me first. 

Being unarmed outside of the town of Longyearbyen — the world's northernmost settlement with more than 1,000 permanent residents — is illegal. Longyearbyen is in largely ice-covered Svalbard, Norway and has at least 300 polar bears roaming around. For that reason anyone venturing outside of the town is required to carry a rifle for protection. Last August a man was killed by a bear on the edge of town. Several other people have been mauled or killed over the years. 

I was certainly prime polar bear bait when I hiked out of Longyearbyen onto the Longyearbreen glacier tongue in the summer of 2009. I’d just spent the week even further north in a very comfortable Arctic research camp in Ny-?lesund.

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