Social media users are sharing a photo online claiming that a polar bear has been spotted in different parts of the United States. These allegations are false; the photo dates back to December 2019 when it was shared by the governor of Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard.
Examples can be seen here and here.
While some users shared the image as a joke, others seemed to believe it might be true. Comments on posts include: “It can not really be”, “Shopping photo”, “Is it even real? Is there really a bear loose?” And “Omg, it’s crazy.”
The posts contain various alleged places for the polar bear such as Chicago, Texas, West Virginia, Louisiana and more (here, here, here, here).
The reports may have started as a joke due to the recent record under cold temperatures that hit many parts of the US (here).
In Lincoln, Nebraska, a reading of minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 35 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday shattered a record set in 1978 of minus 18F (minus 27C). In the usually toasty Dallas-Fort Worth, minus 1F (minus 17C) broke a record set in 1903 of 12F (minus 11C) (here).
When you perform a reverse image search on Google, the photo appears in an article about a polar bear seen by a local newspaper in Svalbard, Norway (‘Svalbard Posten’) of 28 December 2019 here.
The Governor of Svalbard posted a statement on their website on 1 January 2020 in which he explains that a bear was discovered on 26 December 2019 at 05:00 while exploring areas around various buildings in Svalbard’s capital Longyearbyen. The statement reveals that the polar bear was killed because it posed a danger to residents.
Terje Carlsen, communications officer for the governor of Svalbard, confirmed to Reuters that “the photo of the polar bear was taken by the governor of Svalbard in the city of Longyearbyen” and that the allegations that it was noticed in the United States were false.
Halfway between the northern tip of Europe and the North Pole, the Svalbard archipelago with snow-capped mountains and glaciers is home to 2,939 people and 975 polar bears, according to the Norwegian Statistics Office and the Norwegian Polar Institute (here). The ratio between human and polar bear on Svalbard is indeed about 3: 1.
A polar bear killed a 17-year-old boy and seriously injured four others in August 2011. Another polar bear killed a 38-year-old man in August 2020 here on Svalbard.
VERDICT
Untrue. The photo of the bear was taken and shared in Norway in 2019 and connects it to various locations across the United States in icy cold weather across the country.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.