Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Photo trap destroyed by polar bear

Three days ago, I placed a camera trap at a fresh musk ox carcass. The night after I placed the camera, we had a polar visiting the research station. Due to work and weather I was not able to check on it before although I knew the batteries would not last for three days. I hoped the polar bear would have found the carcass and that I could catch some photos of it there. When I came to the camera trap today, I found that the bear had indeed been there. The carcass was moved arround and so was the trap!
The bear had snapped the ball head socket and the small pelicase with the camera was lying 50m from where I placed it. When I picked it up it was heavy and I realised that it was full of snow. Back at the station I brushed off the camera and dried it up a bit. With a new battery, it worked fine. Unfortunately it had ran out of power before the bear came but I got some nice images of arctic foxes.