A polar bear was seen Saturday in the Canadian region of Quebec, in a rare appearance that stunned the residents of a small town and prompted local authorities to warn the need to beware of the animal.
Witnesses reported that the bear, which has become a symbol of the dangers of climate warming, was seen in the morning hours in the city of Madeleine Center in the Gaspícia region, a peninsula along the south bank of the Saint Laurent River.
As of Saturday afternoon, officials were still trying to find the animal.
“The dog was barking and I heard my husband yell, ‘There’s a bear, there is a bear!'” said Sophie Bonneville of the town of 2,000 people, 800 km east of Montreal.
Quebec police posted a tweet on Twitter warning residents of the bear and urging them to stay indoors.
Bonneville said no one in town had ever seen a polar bear so far south, not even wildlife officials.
“People thought it was a joke,” she told AFP.
“How can a bear cross the iceberg and swim and get here? Even people on the north bank have never seen anything like that,” she added.
The police carried out patrols in the area where people come for mountain picnics.
“We went from house to house to ask residents to stay indoors,” Quebec provincial police spokesman Stephane Tremblay told AFP, adding that he had never seen a polar bear in this area either.
“With climate change, anything is possible,” said Bonneville, who was able to snap pictures of the bear before it moved into a wooded area.
“The worrying thing about it is to find out why he came here. Is it due to warming? Or is it just a mistake of nature?”
Canada has listed polar bears, the largest terrestrial carnivores, as a “vulnerable” species.
A study published in 2020 in the journal “Nature Climate Change” showed that climate change may lead to the extinction of these animals because warming causes the gradual melting of the ice masses in the Arctic.
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