Ny Ålesund and Kongsfjord. May 2000. Part VII. Bear in Town

[Read the first part of this post here.]
In our wandering around town, we met Wolf, one of Ny Ålesund's four dogs. Their little cluster of kennels, just outside town, was surrounded by a wire fence about 10 feet high. The dogs were kept on chains as well, as Ny Ålesund's migratory bird population wouldn't have taken kindly to visits to their nests during the breeding season. Of the four dogs, one called Wolf was the most sociable, seen on walks around town with his human. Wolf wasn't a particularly big dog, mostly white – kind of a scruffy Samoyed look about to him. He seemed to delight in his role as the only animal in town who was available for petting.

The dogs' kennels were in a ragged lean-to at the enclosure's edge. Once samples had been taken from the dead seals, Bjørn dragged their carcasses to the dogs' enclosure, stacked them on the back of the lean-to, outside the wire. He didn't want to see the dead animals go to waste, and so dropped them off for dog food.

The carcasses lay, a small, sad, frozen brown lump, about four feet above the ground, open for all to see. I heard a few mutterings by other scientists, expressing their disapproval – most were disgusted with the shooting-for-science. And the meat left in the open was seen as an invitation to bears – and Bjørn was blamed for that, too, even though he'd just left it there for the dogs' owners to sort out.

Sure enough. One sunny lunchtime, Sofie and I strolled back to the canteen, from a recording session at the harbour wall. Meals at Ny Ålesund are provided by the Kings Bay company. The canteen was a large glasshouse with a view over the fjord to the Three Crowns, mountain peaks to the east. The spectacular building was new – part of an ongoing programme to refurbish the facilities at Ny Ålesund. Norway is keen to demonstrate its ownership of the Svalbard archipelago, and with oil money pouring in (only Luxembourg has a higher per capita gross domestic product), the government can afford to splurge on beautiful new buildings. Our meals mostly involved drinking in the view while talking science with whoever else was eating at the time.

This lunch was different. A call of “bear” saw most diners leave their meals and mob the windows. A young male polar bear ambled along the shoreline, heading east. His path took him a little way above the high tide mark, well seaward of most buildings. Everyone stopped eating for ten minutes or so until he'd moved out of sight.

It still strikes me as bizarre that my first view of a polar bear was from a canteen.

After eating, Sofie and I dropped into the Polar Institute building to check email before heading back down to the harbour wall. A message on the blackboard read – WARNING. POLAR BEAR IN TOWN. PLEASE TAKE YOUR PRECAUTIONS. Unlike most animals, polar bears will attack people without provocation. The bears that end up wandering around settlements are usually juveniles, particularly males, trying to find their way in the world. Older, more sensible adults, know that avoiding people in a smart idea if you're a big, toothy carnivore. All the youngsters see is the opportunity for a free feed – they've yet to learn that there's no such thing.

Sofie picked up the rifle, stashed some bullets in the pocket of her scooter suit. I grabbed our flare pistol and a few flares, and we wandered down to the harbour wall. This time, we paid much more attention to our surroundings as we strolled the couple of hundred yards between the last building in town and the harbour. We'd be stuck without shelter if the bear emerged.

Besides, “strolled” doesn't really do justice to the way I negotiated the numerous patches of ice on the walk – especially the stretch after the last building. Tottered, wobbled, slid, would be more accurate. Given the old joke abut not having to run faster than a bear, just faster than your companion, Sofie was pretty safe with me around.

Anyway, we didn't see the bear. We did see the bear's footprints crossing ours on the road, just off the harbour wall. He must have missed us by a few minutes when we'd walked up to lunch.

The bear had discovered the cache of seal popsicles by the dogs' enclosure and was helping himself to them. He must have thought he'd stumbled into polar bear nirvana, so he decided to hang around. But his decision to settle in around Ny Ålesund's outskirts presented a few problems.


Wandering around town with a rifle, it soon became clear why folks with long experience working in Svalbard brought their own hand guns. Christian had an immaculate .44 magnum made entirely of stainless steel - something any sensible mammal would run away from on sight. Another Norwegian scientist walked around with a semi-automatic pistol in a shoulder holster under his scooter suit. Their easy familiarity with firearms contrasted with that of some other scientists, most famously the young British woman who the previous year had accidentally discharged a rifle inside a hut (luckily upwards, through a roof). I was a little uneasy that there might be folks in town with similar abilities, though having a loaded firearm inside Ny Ålesund's town limits is forbidden.


Another difference was also clear. Many scientists around Ny Ålesund were unhappy that Bjørn had shot the seals at all, and the pile of seal carcasses acted as a constant reminder. The Norwegians who staffed the base were far more blasé. Norway's one of the only nations where scientists are allowed to (and arguably, encouraged to) kill marine mammals for scientific purposes. Bjørn's work – although as he was just KitnChristian's research assistant, so it was really their work – was viewed with disgust by many.

[This photo is of chunks of bearded seals, taken by Sofie the previous year.]
I felt uncomfortable, as I didn't approve of the killing, but didn't want to speak ill of Bjørn. It was worse for Sofie, who'd been with Bjørn when he was shooting the seals but who didn't like it either. This was her second field season with the Norwegian Polar Institute at Ny Ålesund, and she was part of KitnChristian's team, and so was seen as one of the Norwegians by most folks. But as a couple, Sofie and I were an entity just separate enough from the Norwegians that some could – and did - let us know just what they thought.


After a couple of days, the whole bear-in-town issue came to a head.


Around three o'clock one morning, we awoke to dogs barking, then howling, people yelling. Eventually, along with everyone else, we dragged ourselves up, pulled on scooter suits, grabbed the rifle and some bullets, the flare pistol and some flares, and wandered out to see what was happening. Twenty-four hour daylight meant not feeling like it was the wee hours of the morning, and walking in sunlight that could have been any time of day.

The commotion was at the dog's enclosure. Three or four people were attempting to scare the bear away. By the time we wandered out, they'd started firing flares at the ground in front of the bear. Little gouts of coloured flame popped off, the bear ambled away. We returned to bed.

The flare pistols were the weapons of first choice to frighten polar bears away. As with all of the larger mammals on Svalbard, centuries of hunting almost wiped them out. An international agreement to conserve polar bears in 1973 saw hunts banned in Norwegian territory. Bear numbers are increasing now, although exactly how many there are is still unknown (the Polar Institute has a current project to address this). Bears are a risk on Svalbard – a young woman was killed by one near Longyearbyen in 2002. But shooting a bear in self-defence is the option of last resort, which is why we'd been issued with a flare pistol as well as a rifle.

I'd been intrigued to see just how well a few flares would frighten a bear. They certainly worked. He never returned.

Wolf had been the only dog mauled during the incident. There was a huge bend in the enclosure's wire where the bear had climbed in. Quite how Wolf, not a particularly large dog, had managed to fight off a polar bear while still chained up, remains a mystery. He had some nasty cuts, but was remarkably chipper, all things considered. He wallowed in being the town hero while his wounds healed. Sled dogs are tough.

Bjørn was seriously in the doghouse. His pile of seal carcasses were now a reminder of what had kept the bear around. To many, he was responsible for what happened, including risking the bear's life and everyone's favourite dog. Many – probably most - scientists in Ny Ålesund work on environmental monitoring projects. Intelligent people who study environmental issues do so because they care about the world. Most tend not to be fans of killing animals in the name of science, especially in an area that's supposedly protected. Bjørn was decidedly unpopular.


Bjørn had other problems too – he'd been struggling to keep working with the pain of his back injury. Just after the bear incident, his back became too much and he had to head back to Tromsø for medical care. The miasma of ill-will seemed to fly away with him.

[Read the final part of this post here.]