Polar bear is wandering far from its oceanside home
FAIRBANKS - Security personnel on the Dalton Highway got a surprise visit recently from a wayward polar bear.
The young, skinny bear evidently wandered more than 100 miles down the highway from the Beaufort Sea. That's the farthest inland biologists who study the animals have seen a polar bear travel, said Scott Schliebe of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage.
"We haven't recorded any (polar) bears that far inland before," Schliebe told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
Dan Moody, a building maintenance foreman with the Department of Transportation, saw the bear about a week ago at about 10 p.m. when he and fellow maintenance foreman Schipman Kim pulled into the Sag River maintenance station about five miles south of Pump Station 3.
"He was walking down the road in the middle of camp," Moody said.
Moody leaned out the window of the truck and snapped some pictures of the bear. At one point, he was only about 15 feet away.
"He just kind of ambled up to the truck and wandered off the side of the road," Moody said.
The bear was seen two days earlier by Alyeska Pipeline Service security workers at Pump Station 3, said Alyeska Communications Manager Curtis Thomas. The bear didn't cause any trouble and simply appeared to be curious about what was inside the fence surrounding the facility.
"He just hung around the (front) gate pacing back and forth," Thomas said. "He hung around one day and then he headed south."
Polar bears commonly travel inland but don't usually go more than 20 or 30 miles, biologists said. Lone polar bears have showed up twice in the last 10 years at Kavik Camp, an old oil camp about 50 miles from the Beaufort Sea and a polar bear denned high up in the mountains in the Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge two years ago.
Young polar bears are more apt to make long inland movements than older, more experienced bears, because they don't know any better, Schliebe said.
The bear is probably just a young, curious bear that's attracted to the sights and smells of the camps.
"Polar bears are rewarded for being on the ice because most of the time when they see or smell something and go check it out it's something to eat," he said.
Schliebe said there have been numerous reports this year of polar bears headed inland. The move could be in response to Arctic Ocean pack ice being farther off shore than it has been in 50 years.
The ice pack was 170 miles from Kaktovik and 290 miles from Barrow at the end of September. The lack of ice may be hindering bears' hunting efforts.
Normally at this time of year, polar bears are on the Beaufort Sea pack ice hunting for seals and anything else they can find to eat, said Schliebe.
"I'm hoping he comes to his senses and heads back to saltwater so he can find a meal," he said.