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Friday night fright: Governor chases away mother polar bear, two cubs near Longyearbyen

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A mother polar bear and two cubs whose tracks were seen headed toward Longyearbyen on Friday afternoon were chased away from a heavily traveled area about 10 kilometers east of town shortly after midnight, according to The Governor of Svalbard. Officials plan to check the area again Saturday and are urging travelers to take precautions.

An alert was issued by the governor 3 p.m. Friday when fresh tracks were discovered at Passhytta.

“The tracks are probably from a female with cubs and they are going in the direction Longyearbyen,” the alert stated.

Officials from the governor’s office searched for the animals using a helicopter and snowmobiles, but reported no sightings in a second bulletin at about 8 p.m. However, officials continued monitoring the area and the bears were detected at the mouth of Foxdalen at about 1 a.m. Saturday

“With the helicopter and the snowmobiles, the three bears were driven into Foxdalen,” Police Chief Lt. Trond Olsen said in a prepared statement. “They responded both to the noise of the helicopter, the snowmobiles and the scare devices we used. When we left them, they were heading further into the valley.”

Foxdalen is a popular dogsledding area, and borders the heavily traveled dogsledding and snowmobile paths in Adventdalen. The valley is still in 24-hour darkness, but there a full moon and partly cloudy skies allowed some visibility Friday night and Saturday.

 

 

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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