Polar bears don’t usually come to St. Brendan’s in northeastern Newfoundland but they do like to follow seals floating on ice floes down the coast nearby. This year, there has been a lot of pack ice which could have been what allowed a bear to come closer than usual to the town.
‘He…took the seal and ate it…like cookies’
Dennis Broderick told Canadian Press (CP) he left his home to shovel snow when he saw the bear run off to some nearby ice to eat a seal. “He just took the seal and ate it, just like someone was eating cookies,” said the town’s mayor, Veronica Broomfield to CP.
Lest the bear turn hungry eyes on townspeople, wildlife officers decided he should be removed. They shot the huge predator with a tranquilizer, bundled it into a sling and carried it off in a helicopter. The bear was to be released in a less populated area on Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula.
You want to hope the bear banger works
Rangers patrol parts of Newfoundland and Labrador at this time of year armed with shotguns and bear bangers. These are small hand-held devices that emit a loud noise to, hopefully, scare bears away. You do want them to work because male bears stand about three metres tall and weigh between 350 and 550 kg and they are ferocious hunters.
From Canadian Press and Anna Delaney, CBC News
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