Europe1 .fr with AFP 2:10 p.m., August 8, 2022

A French tourist in her 40s was injured by a polar bear on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic on Monday.

The animal entered a camp before touching her on the arm.

The days of the Frenchwoman are not in danger and the latter was able to be evacuated by helicopter.

A French tourist was injured by a polar bear that entered a camp on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic, but her life is not in danger, local authorities announced on Monday.

The woman, whose identity has not been specified, was part of an expedition of 25 people who were staying in tents in the middle of nature in the west of this territory twice the size of Belgium, just over a thousand miles from the North Pole.

The days of the Frenchwoman not in danger

“A bear entered a camp this morning around 8:30 a.m. and injured a French woman in the arm,” local police chief Stein Olav Bredli said.

"His days are not in danger," he added.

The tourist was evacuated by helicopter to the hospital in Longyearbyen, the main town of the archipelago.

“It is a woman in her 40s who was slightly injured,” said a spokeswoman for hospital authorities, Solveig Jacobsen.

The exact circumstances of the incident were not specified.

“Shots targeted the polar bear which was frightened and left the scene,” said Stein Olav Bredli.

Injured, the animal was later located by the authorities who, due to the extent of its injuries, finished it off.

Six fatal attacks since 1971

In Svalbard, carrying a rifle is mandatory when leaving urban communities to be prepared in case of a chance encounter with a bear that weighs between 300 and 600 kg for males and half as much for females.

According to a 2015 count, the Norwegian sector of the Arctic is home to around 1,000 polar bears, a species that has been protected since 1973. 

Some 300 of them live all year round on the archipelago and some have resettled in the west of the territory - where the human presence is also concentrated - where they had disappeared when hunting was still permitted.

Six fatal attacks on humans have been counted there since 1971. The last involving a 38-year-old Dutchman dates back to 2020.

According to experts, the receding sea ice under the effect of global warming deprives bears of their favorite hunting ground, where they gorge themselves on seals, and pushes them to approach places populated by humans, in search of of food