Moose Droppings

Polar Bear Disrupts School Trip

Jun 30, 2008 @ 10:10 pm by Moose

Photo by Moose

Canadian First & Second graders had their scavenger hunt disrupted when park workers observed a polar bear in the area. The students were gathered safely in a park building while wildlife officers hunted and killed the large male polar bear.

“Because there were people in the park we didn’t want to detour the bear. There were just too many people around,” Williams said.
The Amarok Hunters and Trappers Association (HTA) had one polar bear tag left over this year, which has now been applied to this bear.
It kept the hide and distributed the meat at four corners downtown.
David Veevee, who stopped by the site as residents cut up the steaming meat, pointed to the bear’s teeth, which were ground down to stubs and stained with age.
“It’s got to be a pretty old bear,” he said.
Williams estimated the bear, which was about 2.5 metres tall, to have been about 20 years old. It was healthy and not too skinny, he said.
Only about six bears have been spotted this close to Iqaluit over the past six years, and in each case the bear was shot, according to Alden.
“The ones we chase off will return once or twice, and then we have to put them down anyway,” he said.

Iqaluit resident Elizabeth Qammaniq harvests a piece of polar bear downtown on June 25. The male bear was shot by wildlife officers at Sylvia Grinnell Park earlier that day. - Karen Mackenzie/NNSL photo

Northern News Service

Healthy 20 year old polar bear? Seems odd guess he hadn’t heard about global warming. The villagers ate good I bet here in America it would of gone to waste for sure. Can’t imagine hungry Americans coming out to the city square to cut off a hunk of meat off a fresh kill to bring it home to feed the family.

Story by Dan McLaughlin AKA Moose