Polar bear that walked unprecedented 1,000 km south from Arctic habitat is caught in Yakutia

A young polar bear, likely female, was lured into a specially-made cage by a stack of fish splashed with fish oil after it held a village of Dzhebariki-Khaya under a brief siege. 

Residents were asked to keep children at home after the polar bear was seen stealing dog food, sleeping in backyards, and attacking local men who were trying to scare it away. 

Finally the bear was caught in the evening of 11 May.

‘This is an absolutely unique case, the first in the history of Russia and Eurasia when such a rare species from the Arctic habitat went this far south into the mainland. There is no explanation into why this happened yet’, said Roman Smetanin, head of Yakutia’s BioResources directorate who took part in the bear-hunting operation. 

‘This is an absolutely unique case, the first in the history of Russia and Eurasia when such a rare species from the Arctic habitat went this far south into the mainland. There is no explanation into why this happened yet’, said Roman Smetanin, head of Yakutia’s BioResources directorate who took part in the bear-hunting operation. 

The lone polar bear was first spotted at the end of March by villagers of Batagai, Topolinoye and Khandyga - and each new sighting was further away from the Arctic shore. 

The polar bear was moving south fast along the rivers, bypassing remote settlements, which is why wildlife experts took so long tracing it. 

By 11 May, when the bear got to the village of Dzebariki-Khaya in Tomponsky district it had walked more than 1000km (over 600 miles) into the Siberian interior.

‘As soon as heard about the bear in the village we asked the villagers to stay put, and ten of us - a team from the Ministry of Ecology, Institute of Biology, Ministry of Emergencies, Nature watchdog and Yakutsk Zoo - flew to the site. 

‘We had two options, to use a food trap, or to immobilise it, and we really wanted to avoid the latter given that the bear was on the road for so long. Luckily it liked the smell of the food trap and got inside the cage’, said Roman Smetanin. 

The bear is about two years old, experts believe. 

The polar bear filmed minutes after it was caught; the option of releasing it back to the wild by the Laptev Sea is still viable 

It was flown to Orto Doidu zoo near regional capital Yakutsk, where it will stay on quarantine before going through medical test. 

Next is the question about the bear’s future, and specialists believe that the option of releasing it back in the wild by the Laptev Sea is still viable. 

The second option would be life in one of the Russian zoos.