Polar bear kills woman and boy in Alaska town

A polar bear that chased residents around a small Alaska town attacked and killed two people before being shot to death, authorities said.

According to a dispatch by the Alaska Department of Public Safety, the attack occurred Tuesday in Wales, a small community on the western tip of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula.

“Initial reports indicate that a polar bear had entered the community and had chased multiple residents,” the state Department of Public Safety wrote. “The bear fatally attacked an adult female and juvenile male – it was shot and killed by a local resident as it attacked the pair.”

The names and ages of the woman and boy were not released. As of Tuesday afternoon, the state Department of Public Safety said that “next of kin notifications are still in progress.”

State troopers and the state Department of Fish and Game planned to travel to Wales once weather allowed. Wales is a predominantly Inupiaq town of fewer than 200 people northwest of Nome.

According to Kawerak Inc., a nonprofit tribal consortium, Wales is “one of the oldest communities in the Bering Strait region.” The Inupiaq name for Wales is “Kingigin, named for the mountain that rises above it,” the group notes.

In Alaska’s recent history, fatal polar bear attacks have been rare. A polar bear killed a man in the village of Point Lay in 1990. Biologists later said the animal showed signs of starvation, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

A 2017 study maintained that polar bear attacks around the world are very rare – but linked “increased concern for both human and bear safety” to predictions of higher numbers of “nutritionally stressed” bears spending more time on land near people because of the loss of their sea ice habitat. The U. S. Geological Survey has pointed to declines in sea ice.