On Thursday, August 8, two polar bears killed an employee at a remote radar station off the coast of Baffin Island in Arctic Canada.

The incident occurred on the uninhabited island of Brevoort Island. The radar station is part of the North Warning System of Canada and the USA, which is operated by the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The Nasittuq Corporation, which operates the stations, has not released further details, including the name of the deceased, but said one of the bears was later killed.

Permanent Arctic camps, such as mining operations, always have an armed polar bear guard from one of the surrounding communities on guard. But Nasittuq usually runs these automated stations seasonally, for just a few days at a time. When I accompanied Nasittuq workers to another station in North Warning a few years ago, we didn’t have a bear guard with us. But the workers never left the buildings except in a vehicle.

Polar bears tend to be solitary animals, but young polar bears that have recently left their mothers stay together for a time. In 1983, two starving three-year-old polar bears attacked oil workers in the Beaufort Sea. One killed the foreman of a seismic camp; the other climbed aboard a crew vessel and killed an 18-year-old drilling worker. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police later shot both bears.

There are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide. Two thirds of them live in Arctic Canada.