Border Guard helicopter picks up frightened hikers from National Park

Hikers encountered mother bear and three cubs

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"Exit, pursued by a bear" is probably the most famous of William Shakespeare's stage-directions, from The Winter's Tale.
      It wasn't QUITE like that on Saturday, but it was close. The brown bear, or bears, since there were four in all, did not do any actual pursuing, but there was a definite exit - a very rapid one, by helicopter no less.
     
The sighting of the bears that produced this sequence of events was made on the lake known as Pitkä Saarijärvi in the Nuuksio National Park on Saturday afternoon.
      The Espoo Police Department was notified of a mother bear and three cubs after a call from two women who were hiking on the ice of the lake.
      The mother bear had not behaved aggressively, and might not have even noticed the hikers.
     
According to the police, the bear was walking some 50 metres away from the hikers.
      The lake is on the Vihti side of the border with Espoo. The Nuuksio National Park sprawls over roughly 45 square kilometres of upland lake district, stretching over parts of Espoo, Kirkkonummi, and Vihti.
      ”After seeing the bears, the two women were afraid to move in the area any longer, and a helicopter from the Finnish Border Guard picked them up, while the bear and her cubs continued moving on”, reported Sgt. Jouni Räsänen.
     
The police did not have the necessary equipment, which is why they asked for assistance from the rescue services, whereafter the helicopter was called out to rescue the hikers from the difficult terrain.
      According to the police, bear sightings have also been made earlier in Nuuksio, even though this was the first one this spring. No further reports had been recorded by Saturday afternoon.
     
”The presence of bears in our forests is natural, and anybody hiking in this area could have encountered the bear”, Räsänen noted.
      Bears try to avoid humans to the very last, and hikers are advised to make a noise in order that the animals can move away before any close encounters take place.
     
The police note further that hikers who spot traces of bears moving with cubs should exercise extreme caution. Around this time of year, bears are waking up from their winter hibernation, and mother bears will often have cubs in tow.
      The rare cases of a bear actually attacking a human have generally involved the human's inadvertently getting between the bear and her cub.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Lucky escape for backpacker in Nuuksio National Park (13.10.2008)
  Nuuksio National Park to provide Nature Centre for visitors (16.2.2009)
  Bear-hunt on city streets of Hämeenlinna (9.11.2006)

See also:
  If you go down to the woods today...(21.5.2004)

Links:
  Nuuksio National Park

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