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Pastimes : Bear Stories -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (512)	5/19/2006 9:24:22 PM
From: goldworldnet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6877

Estonian officials prepare to move ice-floe bear from island Fri May 19, 4:25 PM ET news.yahoo.com Estonian officials were preparing to launch a costly operation to transport a bear to the mainland from an island, where he landed last month after drifting on an ice-floe in the Baltic Sea. Hunters and environmental officials are due to arrive Saturday on Ruhnu Island off Estonia's southern coast, where they will shoot the brown bear with a tranquilizer before transporting it to the mainland, an environment ministry official said. "The team will include specialists who have the task of sedating the bear so that we can take it to mainland Estonia, either by helicopter or by ship," Kaarel Roht, the ministry's chief hunting expert, told AFP. "The sooner we do it, the better. The bear is causing a lot of distress on the island," he said. The brown bear, believed to be four or five years old, arrived on the island more than a month ago after keeping Estonians on tenterhooks when it was spotted adrift in the Baltic Sea on a small block of ice early last month. A helicopter rescue team that was dispatched to rescue the bear had to turn back empty-handed because of thick fog. Nature conservation officials warned after the failed rescue mission that the bear was probably dead. But days later, islanders on Ruhnu said they had spotted what looked like bear tracks on the island. A hunting expert confirmed the pawprints were those of a bear. At first, Ruhnu's inhabitants shared Estonia's relief that the brown bear was alive and well and had not drowned in the Baltic. But more than a month later, and after several failed attempts to tranquilize the bear and take it off the island, the 60 islanders want the bear's hide. They have appealed to the environment ministry to shoot the animal if attempts to catch it fail, as the presence of the large wild animal on Ruhnu means their children cannot play outside. Some islanders also fear the bear will start destroying farmland. "The team sent to trap the bear has a one-way ticket to the island. That means they will not return before they solve the problem," Environment Minister Villu Reiljan said Thursday. * * *