A group of polar bears has surrounded a team of Arctic researchers in a remote part of Russia, the WWF says.
A group of polar bears has surrounded a team of Arctic researchers in a remote part of Russia, the WWF says.
COURTESY Vladimir Kipriyanov/WWF
Researchers tried to scare the bears off with flares, but they were undeterred, and the WWF says team has no other weapons.
Researchers tried to scare the bears off with flares, but they were undeterred, and the WWF says team has no other weapons.
COURTESY Vladimir Kipriyanov/WWF
The presence of the bears is preventing a team of meteorologists and engineers from leaving the weather station on the island of Vaygach to measure water temperatures in the Arctic Sea.
The presence of the bears is preventing a team of meteorologists and engineers from leaving the weather station on the island of Vaygach to measure water temperatures in the Arctic Sea.
courtesy Viktor Nikiforov/wwf
Polar bears surround Arctic researchers

Story highlights

Polar bears surround researchers in the Arctic, the WWF says

Researchers tried to scare the bears away with flares but it didn't work

The bears are preventing them from leaving their station to measure sea temperatures

CNN  — 

Five hungry polar bears have surrounded a team of unarmed researchers at a remote outpost in northern Russia.

The bears have settled in the fields outside a weather station on the island of Vaygach in the Arctic Sea, preventing researchers from leaving the building to conduct their work, the World Wide Fund for Nature in Russia said in a statement.

The team, which consists of two meteorologists and an engineer, tried to scare them off with flares, but the bears were undeterred – and the Russian WWF says the team has no other weapons at its disposal.

The bears sleep near the station and have been seen fighting with one another outside the building in recent days, one of the researchers at the station told Viktor Nikiforov, the head of the WWF Polar Bear Patrol project.

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The presence of the bears means that the researchers have been unable to make their twice daily trip, several hundred meters from the weather station, to measure water temperatures in the sea.

“People living in the Arctic must be prepared to face with a polar bear,” Nikiforov said in the statement. “However, the station staff have no weapons.”

“In addition, employees are not provided with any scaring-off devices and the station area is not fenced.”

Wild animals make themselves at home

The WWF statement said the Polar Bear Patrol was keeping in touch with the researchers and appealing to the Russian government to provide the weather station with the “necessary equipment and means of scaring the polar bears.”

Arctic sea ice is the natural habitat of polar bears but it is melting away. As Arctic sea ice levels decline, so does the number of seals, which the bears depend on for food.

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have estimated that two-thirds of polar bears will be gone by 2050.

CNN’s Alla Eschenko and Matthew Chance contributed to this story.