An Australian reporter had a ‘frightening’ run-in with a ‘starving’ polar bear while out filming in Canada.
Tara Brown, from 60 Minutes, had a shocking close encounter after heading out to film a segment highlighting the climate crisis entitled On Thin Ice in 2017. You can see how it went down here:
Brown visited Churchill in Canada, which has a population of just 900 people, and is ‘under siege’ from the 1,000 hungry polar bears who also inhabit the town.
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As she travelled through the small town in her ‘flimsy hire car’, she quickly became caught in a terrifying situation when a polar bear began to climb over and lash out at her car.
In the film, Brown explains that as it’s winter the polar bear should be ‘long gone’ but there isn’t yet enough ice for him to go out on the hunt for seals.
In the footage, Brown explains that her car became stuck in the snow where it was soon approached by a polar bear who was ‘acting like he wants to get in’.
And she’s not wrong, as well as chomping down on various bits of the vehicle, such as the wing mirror, the bear then begins to bang his giant paws against the window while the terrified 60 Minutes crew cower inside.
At one point, Brown comments: “Right now, these windows are starting to feel very thin.”
Luckily a passing snow plough comes to the rescue and is able to scoop the car out from where its stuck and away from danger.
Speaking about the incident in 2020, Brown explained their car got bogged down in the snow and wouldn’t move, leaving her and the team ‘unwitting victims’ of any polar bears who happened to walk by.
She said: “We were there waiting to be towed out and we looked to the side and we saw, like, The Three Bears coming along and we thought, ‘oh, aren’t they nice?’ Until one looked at us, sniffed the air and came towards us.”
“At which point Mickey Breen, our sound recordist, the most lovely man but the biggest coward you’re ever going to meet, started screaming and said ‘lock the doors, lock the doors’ and this bear comes and takes great interest in our car and starts eating parts of it.
It did get a little scary when the bear started pounding on the window. It felt like a cartoon, you know when the glass bends in and bounces back?”
Thankfully, help arrived and they were towed away to safety by staff from the National Park.
Topics: Australia, Animals, TV and Film
Claire Reid