Russian villagers were forced to take shelter Thursday, as dozens of polar bears invaded their town in search of food, according to multiple reports. The small village of Ryrkaypiy was forced to cancel all public events in response to the unexpected visitors.
The Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund announced Thursday that the polar bears have resorted to feasting on the carcasses of walruses that have been sitting on the village’s shores in the Chukotka region.
“Almost all bears are thin,” Tatyana Minenko, head of the village’s bear patrol, said in the statement, according to reports. “Among them are both adults and young animals; there are females with cubs of different ages.”
According to Fox News, scientist Anatoly Kochnev told Russian news agency TASS that polar bear visits have increased in recent years, with as few as five bears even coming near the village as recently as five years ago.
“I, as a scientist, believe (Ryrkaypiy village) should not remain there,” Kochnev said. “We try to control the situation, but nobody would want to think what may happen there in three to five years.”
The bears’ increasingly frequent visits have been brought on by unusually high temperatures in the area, causing the ice to melt and affecting the polar bears’ hunting habits, according to CNN.
“If the ice was strong enough, the bears, or at least some of them, would have already gone to sea, where they could hunt for seals or sea hares,” said WWF-Russia project coordinator Mikhail Stishov, according to BBC News. “Similar situations are becoming the norm. We need to adapt to this so that neither people nor bears suffer.”