Cops go on bear alert

THE threat of a polar bear attack is a reality for the huge Canadian police and military contingent searching for the teenage duo suspected of shooting dead Australian tourist Lucas Fowler, his US girlfriend and a university botanist.

The manhunt for Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, continued with the addition of a Royal Canadian air force Hercules and personnel searching the wilderness near Gillam, a remote area in northern Manitoba.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police distributed a photo on Saturday of a polar bear encountered by searchers 200km north of Gillam.

McLeod and Schmegelsky have been on the run since the bullet-ridden bodies of Mr Fowler, 23, from Sydney, and his North Carolina girlfriend, Chynna Deese, 24, were found on the side of a highway 3000km away in Canada’s west on July 14.

Locals around Gillam predicted the teenagers would face extreme challenges — polar and black bears, wolves, irritating black flies and mosquitoes, dense scrub and swamps — if they did, as suspected by the RCMP, enter bushland on Monday night after setting fire to their stolen getaway Toyota RAV-4.

The Canadian government, desperate to catch the fugitives, approved the RCMP request for military support.

On the ground authorities went door-to-door canvassing locals in their homes and searching abandoned buildings in the hope of finding the duo or picking up clues.

After days of fruitless searching the RCMP on Friday admitted they were “exploring the possibility” the teenagers may have fled Gillam with the help of a third person unaware the two were fugitives.

McLeod and Schmegelsky are longtime school friends.

AAP