'RIHGT WING EXTREMIST' BEAR KILLED 17-YEAR OLD BOY IN NORWEY

[Daanyeer]

Eton pupil killed by polar bear: 17-year-old boy on £4,000 adventure trip is mauled to death as he sleeps in Arctic tent
17-year-old victim had been camping on remote glacier in wildlife trip
Bear was punched away by boy lying next to victim Horatio Chapple

Days before attack, group was 'delighted' at seeing a polar bear

Four other victims are in critical condition at nearby hospital

Bear was 'looking for food' in town with history of attacks, say residents
Group shot bear dead with rifle in desperate bid for survival

By Tom Kelly, Michael Seamark and Tamara Cohen

6th August 2011



An Eton schoolboy sleeping in a tent was mauled to death by a polar bear yesterday.
Horatio Chapple, 17, was on a £4,000 adventure holiday on a remote glacier near the Arctic Circle.

He suffered terrible injuries to the head and upper body in the early-morning attack.

Four other members of the party were badly hurt as the animal rampaged around the campsite hunting for food. It was eventually shot dead.

A trip-wire system which triggers a charge to scare away polar bears failed to activate, the father of one of the survivors said.

Terry Flinders, from Jersey, said the bear burst into the tent where his 16-year-old son Patrick lay, killing Horatio next to him. He said Patrick punched the polar bear on the nose in a desperate attempt to save his life. He escaped with head and arm injuries.

Two trip leaders, Michael Reid and Andrew Ruck, who are in their late twenties and Scott Smith, 17, also suffered head injuries.

They were undergoing surgery last night.
As the party came under attack, they made a frantic call for help using a satellite phone and scrambled helicopters to the glacier, which has no road access during the summer.

Svalbard’s vice-governor, Lars Erik Alfheim, said: ‘After we got the call we sent helicopters as fast as we could. When we got there we found serious injuries.’

The victims were part of a part of 80-strong group of mainly 16-to-23-year-olds on a five-week British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) trip. They were camping in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
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Horatio Chapple, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, who had just finished his penultimate year at Eton, had hoped to study medicine at university.

His grandfather was the former head of the British Army.

Field Marshal Sir John Lyon Chapple, GCB, CBE served as Chief of the General Staff from 1989 to 1992 and was Governor of Gibraltar from 1993 to 1995.

He is the president of BSES and went on one of its expeditions in the 1950s.

Horatio’s family were too upset to speak last night. His economics teacher Geoff Riley posted on Twitter: ‘My thoughts and prayers are with the family & friends of Horatio Chapple (from Eton) who has died in the polar bear incident in North Norway.’

BSES chairman Edward Watson said Horatio was a ‘fine young man’ and added: ‘By all accounts he would have made an excellent doctor.’ Horatio had left base camp with a sub-group of 13 to camp on the Von Postbreen glacier which is heavily populated with polar bears and where there have been a number of previous attacks.



Terry Flinders said he nearly fainted after learning about the attack on TV yesterday morning.
‘I phoned up the BSES and said, “Do you have any information?” The man said, “Yes we do, I’ll pass you on to the manager” – and I thought, “Oh, that’s not good”.

‘He says, “I’m sorry Mr Flinders I’ve got to tell you this”, and I said, “Look, just don’t tell me it’s him that’s dead”.

‘He went, “No, it’s not. Patrick’s in hospital in Norway with head injuries and arm injuries but it’s not life threatening”.’ Mr Flinders said his son was one of three boys in the tent. From accounts of survivors, he thought the bear had chosen Horatio simply because he was the nearest.

‘Patrick was the chubbiest one – he probably had more meat on him, bless him.


‘I think he was probably in the middle, because the bear grabbed hold of his head next, and then his arm, and I don’t know how Patrick got out to be honest.

‘The polar bear attacked him with his right paw across his face and his head and his arm.’

Mr Flinders told Jersey’s Channel Television: ‘One of the other chaps came out with a rifle and tried to kill the polar bear and didn’t do it.

‘And then the leader tried to kill the polar bear, but just before he killed him apparently, the bear mauled him and he’s really, really bad.’


Kyle Gouveia, 17, who was on the expedition, said everyone was given shooting practice on the second day of the trip in case a polar bear attacked.

They also took on ‘bear watches’ at their base camp in Svarlbard and practised using ‘bear flares’, he said.

In a blog about the trip on the website posted on July 27, expedition member Marcus Wright described the group’s excitement at two previous polar bear sightings.

He wrote: ‘I think we must of all dreamt of Polar bears because the next day was eagerly waiting for the ice floes to break up so we could move on to base camp. There was a P.bear sighting across the fjord about a mile away.

‘Everyone was in good spirits because we encountered another P.bear floating on the ice, this time we were lucky enough to borrow an kind Norwegian guide’s telescope to see it properly.

‘After that experience I can say for sure that everyone dreamt of P.bears that night.’

Another blog entry described the training, saying: ‘The teams learnt how to work their stoves, put up their tents and were even trained in polar bear defence which is a requirement if spending time in Svalbard (not that a BSES Expedition has needed it!)’

The archipelago – which has a population of around 2,400 and nearly 3,000 polar bears – attract tourists with its stunning views of ice-covered mountains, fjords and glaciers.
Visitors are urged to carry high-powered rifles whenever venturing outside Svalbard’s capital Longyearbyen and polar bear safety brochure advices campers against setting up their tents in areas where bears roam.

Polar bear researcher Magnus Andersen at the Norwegian Polar Institute said the number of people involved in the attack made it the most serious he has seen.

The last time someone was killed by a polar bear at Svalbard was in 1995, when two people were killed in two different incidents, he said.

The half-ton killer that sees man as its prey
By TOM KELLY
Polar bears are one of the few wild species which will actively hunt humans.

At 10ft tall and half a ton in weight, they are the world’s biggest land predators and top the food chain in the Arctic.

The fearsome creatures can smell prey 20 miles away, smash through yards of ice in minutes to reach seals and devour 100lb of meat at a time with their razor-sharp teeth.

They have incredible vision, can run on the ice at 25mph and are also powerful swimmers capable of crossing 30 miles of water at a time, making them extremely difficult to escape.

Although they feed chiefly on marine animals such as seals and young walruses, they are fearless and will stalk any animal when hungry, including humans.


There have been several previous polar bear attacks on humans in Svalbard, the area where the British teenager was killed.

Last summer a polar bear tore a Norwegian camper from his tent and dragged him 130ft across ice and rocks while he was on a kayak expedition in Svalbard.

Sebastian Plur Nilssen, 22, suffered cuts to his chest, head and neck, but survived by grabbing a rifle and killing the bear with four shots.

Locals said there have also been attacks on a man from Austria and a girl, who both died.

Liv Rose Flygel, 55, an artist and airport worker from Svalbard, said: ‘It’s not the first time. The problem is when the ice goes the bears lose their way and cannot catch food.

‘People don’t really know how dangerous they are. One came down to the sea recently and people were running down to take pictures.’

In nearby Spitzbergen a young polar bear was killed after it attacked a camp where 17 tourists and scientists were staying in 1998.

The campers had scared off the three-year-old male once but it reappeared the following day and charged at two men after they fired warning shots.

Polar bears are well adapted for surviving their hostile, barren environment.

Their double layer of fur and four-inch thick layer of fat means they can live in temperatures of minus 50c.

During the warmer seasons, the bears mate and give birth as they wait for the ice to form, usually in October.

Scientists say there are 22,000 to 27,000 polar bears in the world, 60 per cent of them in Canada. They also live in Alaska, Russia, Greenland and Norway.
The species - Ursus maritimus - is now considered 'vulnerable', as the total number of polar bears has fallen to 25,000. However, hunting restrictions have helped the population to stabilise.
The animal is a formidable swimmer, and can swim up to 100 miles in one go through the icy waters of the Arctic.
The world's most famous polar bear was Knut, who was raised by keepers at the Berlin Zoo but died earlier this year.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1UFdI2RNR

[Beans]

Lols @ Extremist bear.

Patrick was the chubbiest one – he probably had more meat on him, bless him

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