A man who "leapt onto" a polar bear to protect his wife in a First Nations community in north-eastern Canada is expected to recover from serious injuries he sustained in the attack, police say.
The Nishnawbe Aski Police Service said the couple had stepped out of their house at about 5am, local time, on Tuesday to find their dogs, when a polar bear "lunged" at the woman in their driveway.
"The woman slipped to ground as her husband leapt onto the animal to prevent its attack," police said in a statement.
"The bear then attacked the male, causing serious but non-life-threatening injuries to his arms and legs."
A neighbour arrived with a gun and shot the bear several times, police said, before the animal retreated to nearby woods where it died from its injuries.
Police arrived at the scene of the incident in Fort Severn First Nation — a community of about 360 people in northernmost Ontario — after receiving reports of gunshots.
"Police continued to patrol the area to ensure no other bears were roaming the community," it said.
Melting sea ice pushing polar bears inland
A scientist at Polar Bears International, Alysa McCall, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that polar bears rarely attacked humans.
She said when attacks did happen, the bears were often hungry, young or unwell.
"A healthy polar bear that's out on the sea ice is not going to have a lot of incentive to attack a human being," Ms McCall told CBC.
"It could be that [when] this attack happened, maybe this bear was a little hungrier than usual."
But she said as climate change caused ocean temperatures to fluctuate, breaking up sea ices, some bears were forced to travel further inland for food.
"If you're attacked by a polar bear, definitely do not play dead — that is a myth. Fight as long as you can," Ms McCall said.
With Canada home to about 16,000 polar bears, isolated communities living at the top of the world have put different prevention programs in place to reduce such encounters.
In one Canadian town, Arviat, a bear patrol system was previously credited with dramatically reducing the number of bears killed in defence of life or property, from about eight a year before it began in 2010 to one a year afterward.
That can mean patrolling for the animals by snowmobile or four-wheeler, shooing them away with spotlights or a revved engine, or hazing them with beanbag shotguns.
In another town in the country's north, Churchill, polar bears that cannot be scared off are kept in an air-conditioned "bear jail" until the ice freezes up.
They are then transported out to where they can find natural prey such as seals.
