Video: Starving polar bear wanders into Russian city of Norilsk, hundreds of miles from home

By Gianluca Mezzofiore and Nathan Hodge
19 June 2019

(CNN) – A hungry and exhausted young polar bear was spotted wandering in the suburbs of the Siberian industrial city of Norilsk this week, hundreds of miles from its usual habitat. [Over the years, Desdemona has developed a pretty think skin for doom and mass animal suffering, but this video made me weep. –Des]

This is just the latest recent sighting of a bear in a Russian urban area, but the last time a polar bear appeared near Norislk was more than 40 years ago, Anatoly Nikolaichuk, head of the Taimyr Department of the State Forest Control Agency, told Russian state news agency TASS.

Hungry polar bear seen wandering in Russian city hundreds of miles from home

“He is very hungry, very thin and emaciated. He wanders around looking for food. He almost doesn’t pay attention to people and cars,” Oleg Krashevsky, a local wildlife expert who filmed the animal close up, told CNN. “He is quite young and possibly lost his mother.””He probably lost orientation and went south,” Krashevsky added. “Polar bears live on the coast which is more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) away from us. How he got to Norilsk is not clear.” […]

Sea ice across the Arctic is rapidly retreating due to climate change, forcing the bears to travel farther to find food. […]

In April 2019, a starving polar bear was spotted in the village of Tilichiki in the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, also hundreds of miles from its usual habitat.

In February 2019, the remote Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlaya declared a state of emergency over what local authorities described as an “invasion” by dozens of the hungry animals. [more]

Hungry polar bear seen wandering in Russian city hundreds of miles from home