Polar bear shot in Iceland

Polar bears occasionally arrive in Iceland, often having floated on ice floes from Greenland. It's been a while since one turned up though.

Earlier this week one turned up in the Westfjords.

Unfortunately, the way this was dealt with was to shoot the bear....

The piece explains why:

The bear shot on Thursday was the first one seen in the country since 2016. Sightings are relatively rare, with only 600 recorded in Iceland since the ninth century.

While the bears are a protected species in Iceland and it is forbidden to kill one at sea, they can be killed if they pose a threat to humans or livestock.

After two bears arrived in 2008, a debate over killing the threatened species led the environment minister to appoint a taskforce to study the issue, the institute said. The taskforce concluded that killing vagrant bears was the most appropriate response.

The group said the non-native species posed a threat to people and animals, and the cost of returning them to Greenland, about 180 miles away, was exorbitant. It also found there was a healthy bear population in east Greenland, from where any bear was likely to have come.