A father who was killed by a polar bear on a small island in Canada's Hudson Bay this week is being hailed as a hero for throwing himself unarmed between the animal and his three young children.
Aaron Gibbons, 31, was mauled to death Tuesday on Sentry Island, about six miles from Arviat, a hamlet of some 2,600 people on the western shore of Hudson Bay in Nunavut.
"My qangiaq died a hero," Gordy Kidlapik said on Twitter, using the Inuinnaqtun word for nephew.
Kidlapik, director of a hunters and trappers association in Arviat, said the bear surprised Gibbons and his elementary-school age children who were apparently hunting Arctic tern eggs, which are considered a delicacy by humans.
Kidlapik told the Winnepeg Free Press that "the bear started to stalk or charge one of his children. He told his children to run back to the boat and put himself between his children and the bear."
Kidlapik said he could hear the kids calling for help on the CB radio as they got back to their boat.
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A report by Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Arviat said the victim, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was unarmed. The bear was put down by another adult who was nearby and armed.
Kidlapik, 60, sharply criticized tour companies that promote activities in the area like "walk with the bears" that he said on Twitter make the huge meat-eating animals lose their fear of humans.
"You'll see pictures of tourists touching a bear through the fence," Kidlapik told the Free Press by phone Wednesday. "That's not right."
"Bears are losing whatever fear they have of humans," he said. "It's very different from 10 or 15 years ago. Based on my experience and others I've talked to, bears would run away from the sound of an ATV or snowmobile. Today, bears are not doing that. They hang around. They won't run away. They'll go on the trail beside you."
The Nunavut government and the World Wildlife Fund have worked together to try to reduce conflicts between bears and humans, including building steel food storage bins, electric fences around dog team pens, and outfitting hunters with bear sprays and bear "bangers," the Canadian Press reports.
Another factor is a steady warming climate, shrinking the ice that polar bears use as a hunting platform, the CP reports. Western Hudson Bay is estimated to be losing up to five days of sea ice cover per decade.
Still, fatalities from polar bear attacks are relatively rare. A 2017 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on bear attacks found 73 recorded predatory attacks and 20 fatalities between 1870 and 2014. Although the list is expected to be incomplete.
Nearly two-thirds of the attacks were by young adult bears who were starting to starve. Nearly nine in 10 attacks occurred between July and December when the sea ice was at its lowest.
The last polar bear attack in Arviat was in 1999, when a 64-year-old Baker Lake woman was mauled to death while trying to stop the 250-pound bear from attacking her fellow campers,according to the Nunatsiaq News.
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