The struggling bear was found with the box trapped between its jaws at the Dikson arctic outpost in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region. It’s rare for polar bears to roam so close to humans, but as climate change damages their habitat, they’re increasingly turning to garbage dumps to fill their stomachs. On Wednesday, a team of Canadian and US scientists warned that garbage threatens vulnerable polar bears as they become more dependent on nearby landfills in northern communities. This leads to deadly conflicts with humans, said the report published in the journal Oryx. “Bears and trash are a bad relationship,” said co-author Andrew Derocher, a biologist at the University of Alberta. “We know it very well from the brown and black bear perspective, and now it’s a growing issue with polar bears.” They are also moving further south and closer to populated areas as the sea ice melts.
