No joke: Russian scientists marked drawback Kara Sea polar bear with T-34

Reposted from Polar Bear Science

Posted on December 7, 2019 |

The media are so gullible. So keen are they for a sympathetic polar bear sufferer that information retailers all over the place carried a narrative earlier this week a few Russian polar bear that had ‘T-34’ spray-painted on its facet. They took the phrase of Russian polar bear/walrus guide to WWF and Netflix, Anatoly Kochnev, that this was some type of merciless joke that meant an premature dying for the bear. Seems it was nothing of the sort.

Merciless animal abusers daubed T-34 – the title of an iconic Soviet tank – on a wild polar bear. Every day Mail (2 December 2019).

Polar bear spray-painted with ‘T-34’ baffles Russia wildlife consultants BBC (2 December 2019).

Russians noticed a polar bear painted in cryptic graffiti. Scientists are looking for solutions Nationwide Put up (four December 2019)

A polar bear was spray-painted with graffiti, scientists concern it received’t survive CNN (four December 2019).

Apparently, the unique video of the marked bear was posted on a social media website for Chukotak indigenous individuals and subsequently posted on Fb by Sergey Kavry of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who additionally contacted native media.

Solely 5 days in the past, Kochnov was quoted as saying:

‘Scientists couldn’t do that, it might have been any person who ‘joked’ like this.

Besides scientists did do it.

In a report within the Siberian Occasions printed late at the moment, it seems the bear was inflicting issues on Novaya Zemlya (the place dump bears have been an enormous drawback final winter) and was tagged forward of being pushed off:

“The animal was marked with ‘secure paint’ which wears off over two weeks, and moved away to discourage him from coming again.

The bear was sedated and examined, stated senior researcher Ilya Mordvintsev.

The verify confirmed that the male predator was well-fed which meant that he would doubtless not assault.

The mark was made to permit each the locals and consultants recognise the beast in case he returned, and to differentiate it from some other polar bear scavenging on the website.

Andrey Umnikov denied T-34 referred to the tank.

The video [that went viral] was filmed roughly per week in the past, he specified.”

Poor unhappy polar bear information flash is over, morphing into an egg-on-the-face second for WWF and Kochnev.

Habituated dump bears are a wide-spread drawback within the Kara Sea, because the picture of a fats bear testing a container under exhibits.

‘Polar bears checking on garbage containers usually are not rarity. It occurred at Beliy island and Vilkitskiy island,’ Andrey Umnikov defined.

Location of Vilkitskiy Island within the Kara Sea (Wikipedia):

Like this:

Like Loading…