CNN —
A woman and a boy were killed by a polar bear that had been stalking residents of a small, remote Alaska community, state troopers said Tuesday.
The bear chased residents after entering the western Alaska town of Wells before attacking the woman and boy, the Alaska State Police report said.
The bear was shot and killed by another resident while attacking the two victims, according to the report.
The victims have been identified as Summer Myomick, 24, and her 1-year-old son, Clyde Ongtowasruk, Austin McDaniel, director of communications for the Alaska Department of Public Safety, said in a statement Wednesday.
Troopers and Alaska Department of Fish and Game personnel have been working to travel to Wells since the attack, but have been hampered by the weather.
“Poor weather conditions in the region and the lack of lights on the Wells runway prevented Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials from reaching Wells,” McDaniel said Wednesday. “Soldiers continue to make efforts to fly to Wales today.”
Wells is on the coast of western Alaska and has a population of 168, according to the US Census.
Reports of polar bear attacks on humans are extremely rare, a 2017 study published by The Wildlife Society found. “From 1870-2014, we documented 73 wild polar bear attacks spread across the 5 polar bear range countries (Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and the United States) that resulted in 20 human deaths and 63 human injuries “, it says. found.
But melting ice due to climate change has led to a corresponding shift in bear behavior and made human encounters with bears more likely, CNN previously reported.
Residents of Churchill in northern Manitoba, Canada, sometimes called the “polar bear capital of the world,” told CNN in 2021 that bear encounters were becoming more common. Thousands of tourists visit every fall in the hope of catching a glimpse of a bear.
The area’s bear season peaks in October and November, just before the Hudson Bay freezes over again and bears begin migrating north and congregating near the coast.
In recent decades, the bear season has lasted longer because of climate change, residents say. Ice melts earlier and freezes later, keeping bears on land longer.
But attacks on humans remain rare. The last was in 2013, according to Reuters, and there hasn’t been a fatal attack since the early 1980s, CNN reported in 2021.
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