First polar bear spotted in Iceland since 2016. Police shot and killed it.

A polar bear was spotted in a remote village on the northwest tip of Iceland, the first one seen in the country since 2016. Police shot and killed it.

"It's not something we like to do," Westfjords police chief Helgi Jensson said. "In this case … the bear was very close to a summer house. There was an old woman in there."

Apparently the woman spotted the animal digging in her garbage and, quite frightened, called her daughter in Reykjavik to summon help. So the cops arrived and dispatched the young bear.

Polar bears are protected in Iceland but apparently it's OK to kill them if they may be a threat to humans or livestock. There have only been 600 recorded sightings there in more than 1,000 years.

From The Guardian:

Although attacks by polar bears on humans are extremely rare, a study in Wildlife Society Bulletin in 2017 said that the loss of sea ice from global warming has led more hungry bears to land, creating a greater chance of conflicts with humans and increasing the risk to both.

Of 73 documented attacks by polar bears from 1870 to 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States — which killed 20 people and injured 63 — 15 occurred in the final five years of that period.

The bear shot on Thursday was the first one seen in the country since 2016. Sightings are relatively rare, with only 600 recorded in Iceland since the ninth century.

Previously:
• Polar bears occupy abandoned Russian weather station
• Penguins visit the Polar Bears at the St. Louis Zoo
• 'And f*ck polar bears in particular.' — the Trump administration, basically