First polar bear to swim to Iceland in 15 years is shot dead by police in front of sightseers



No mercy: A polar bear like the one shot dead by Icelandic police

The first polar bear to swim to Iceland in 15 years has been shot dead by police, sparking an angry row about whether it should have been spared.

The animal – one of the species most endangered by climate change – was killed despite the availablility of knockout drugs that could have spared his life.

Animal welfare groups are enraged over the decision of Icelandic police to kill the beast, instead of loading guns with tranquiliser darts that were less than an hour away.

The bear was spotted nonchalantly strolling along a road near the town of Skagafjördur yesterday morning around 9.30am by a farmer.



Experts say it had arrived on an ice floe and local laws stipulate they can be killed – despite the fact they are on the endangered species list – if one threatens humans or livestock.

Stefán Vagn Stefánsson, the chief police officer of a neighbouring town, took the decision to shoot it dead.



He claimed no narcotics were available and a gun necessary to fire such drugs was in another part of Iceland 'so therefore it was necessary to kill it'.



The animal was moving and we could not risk losing sight of it. Weather conditions were foggy and the bear was moving quickly.

But his version of events was hotly disputed by the chief veterinarian in the town of Blönduó. Egill Steingrímsson said he had the knockout drugs neccesary to immobilise the bear.

'If the narcotics gun would have been sent by plane it would have arrived within an hour,' he said. 'They could keep tabs on the bear for that long.'

News of the polar bear was broadcast all around Iceland and, by the time the police arrived, a large crowd of sightseers in cars had gathered at the mountain road where the bear was found roaming.

Steingrímsson thinks the police should have closed the road and contained the bear. 'There were around 50 to 60 peoplethere watching. The police did not have many options when the bear ran down the hill, approaching the crowd.



'I’m very unsatisfied that the police did not try to catch it alive and did not close the road,' Steingrímsson said.



Polar bears visit Iceland by drifting ice. The oldest record of them being sighted on the island is from 890, 16 years after the first settlers arrived.The last visit was in 1993 when sailors saw a bear swimming off the coast of Strandir. It was also killed.



Polar bears were frequently tamed during the middle ages, but since then, no bear has been captured alive in Iceland.



The receeding ice at the North Pole is jeopardising their future existence. As the ice breaks up, so their hunting and mating grounds go with it.



A spokesman for PolarWorld, a German group dedicated to the preservation of the polar regions and the creatures which inhabit it, called the bear’s death 'an avoidable tragedy...another great day for mankind'.