tragedy on Svalbard

COMMENT

Yesterday on Svalbard, a remote island north of the Arctic Circle, a hapless outward bound student was attacked and killed by a polar bear. It succeeded in badly mauling 4 other young people before it was eventually dispatched with a bullet.

The dead boy was 17. That's a rotten age to leave the world: you haven't really had a chance to live yet. And the parents, inconsolable in their loss.. "Who'd a thought he'd go that way", they must be puzzling.

But what happened really there? A party of young people, more or less a tourist group, is taken into the domain one of the most naturally aggressive animals in the world, and one who looks upon human beings as food sources. And at the height of the summer, when the sea ice is all but gone, the bears are nearing starvation. They must abandon the sea which is their normal habitat, and eke out their meagre existence on the unfamiliar, and in this one's case, dangerous, land.

I have a suggestion : in view of the environmental pressure those magnificent but beleaguered creatures are under, they should be left alone in their dwindling habitats as far as possible. And that means no more tourist groups of whatever description. It might help more people survive, and perhaps more bears too. We owe it to them, if we are to consider ourselves an advanced civilisation.