This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The threat of a polar bear attack has become a reality for the huge Canadian police and military contingent searching for the teenage duo suspected of shooting dead a tourist couple and a university botanist.

The hunt for Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, continued on Saturday with the addition of a Royal Canadian Air Force CC-130H Hercules and personnel searching the unforgiving wilderness near Gillam, a remote area in northern Manitoba.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police distributed a photo on Saturday of a polar bear encountered by searchers 200km north of Gillam.

McLeod and Schmegelsky have been on the run since the bodies of Lucas Fowler, 23, from Sydney, Australia, and his girlfriend, Chynna Deese, 24, of North Carolina, US, were found dead on the side of a highway 3,000km away in Canada’s west on 14 July.

Canada murder hunt: military join search as suspect's mother pleads for safe ending Read more

Residents around Gillam predicted the teenagers would face extreme challenges – polar and black bears, wolves, irritating black flies and mosquitos, dense scrub and swamps – if they did, as suspected by the RCMP, enter bushland on Monday night after setting fire to their stolen Toyota RAV-4.

“A polar bear was spotted during the search for suspects earlier today – about 200km north of Gillam,” the RCMP, with a photo of the bear, wrote in a tweet on Saturday.

RCMP Manitoba (@rcmpmb) A polar bear was spotted during the search for the suspects earlier today – about 200km north of Gillam. Just some of the wildlife that can be found in northern Manitoba. pic.twitter.com/Z1hbbtOCxw

“Just some of the wildlife that can be found in northern Manitoba.”

The nearby town of Churchill is on a polar bear migration route.

The Canadian government, desperate to catch the fugitives, immediately approved the RCMP request for military support.

On the ground authorities went door-to-door canvassing locals in their homes and searching abandoned buildings in the hope of finding the duo or picking up clues.

The sweep included an abandoned hydroelectric building with 600 rooms.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese. Photograph: Family Handout/AFP/Getty Images

The RCMP surmised the teenagers torched their RAV-4 and fled on foot in Gillam because there have been no reports of stolen cars or carjackings in the area.

After days of fruitless searching the RCMP on Friday admitted they were “exploring the possibility” the teenagers may have fled Gillam with the help of a third person unaware the two were fugitives.

Teenagers' trail of mayhem across Canada leads to wilds of Manitoba Read more

McLeod and Schmegelsky, longtime school friends from Vancouver Island, allegedly encountered Fowler and Deese on 14 July near Liard Host Springs, in northern British Columbia.

The old Chevrolet van Fowler and Deese were driving broke down on the Alaska Highway and left them stranded. They were shot dead and their bodies later found in a ditch near the van.

Four days later and 470km away, University of British Columbia botanist Leonard Dyck was found dead on another highway.