A man who “leapt” onto a polar bear when it lunged at his wife during a rare attack earlier this week was seriously injured but is expected to recover, tribal authorities in Canada said.
A neighbor fatally shot the bear during the Tuesday incident in the Fort Severn First Nation, in the far northern section of Ontario, the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service said in a statement.
The couple encountered the bear at 5 a.m. when they left their home to find their dogs, and the animal lunged at the woman, according to the statement.
Her husband jumped on the animal to protect his wife, who fell to the ground, the police service said. He had serious but non-life-threatening injuries to his arms and legs.
After the neighbor shot the animal, it retreated to a wooded area and died from its injuries, police said.
Polar bear attacks are rare. A 2017 study that surveyed more than a century of conflict between humans and polar bears documented 73 incidents across the animal’s range, including 20 that were fatal, in frozen seas and coastal areas of Canada, Norway, Russia, Greenland and the United States.
The researchers found that nutritionally stressed adult males were the most likely to attack, according to the study, which was published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin.
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Retreating sea ice could prompt more lethal encounters in the future, the researchers wrote.
Canada’s government has said it is home to 17,000 polar bears, or roughly two-thirds of the world’s population, which the United States listed as threatened in 2008 under the Endangered Species Act.
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Other recent attacks include a man who was killed in the remote Canadian territory of Nunavut and a mother and her 1-year-old son who were fatally mauled in Alaska.
NBC News' Lindsay Good contributed.
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