A Thai berry picker is recovering in hospital after surviving a rare bear attack while picking cloudberries in northern Sweden. Police launched an overnight search to destroy the bear responsible but were unable to locate the animal.
Am Saisuk, 46, was attacked by a bear on Friday evening while picking cloudberries in the forests of Lycksele Municipality in Västerbotten County, northern Sweden.
According to Swedish media, the attack took place in the forest between Norrbyberg and Gravmark, several dozen kilometres northwest of Lycksele. Am had reportedly filled a bucket with cloudberries and was walking back to the car when she encountered the bear about 90 metres from the road.
According to her partner, Sunan Phiankham, the bear attacked without warning and bit her three times. He said the attack only ended after she remained completely still and pretended to be dead.
Other berry pickers helped bring the injured woman to medical personnel, after which she was taken to hospital. She suffered injuries to her head and both hands and later underwent surgery at Umeå University Hospital. According to her partner, her condition improved following the operation.
Police were notified at around 10 p.m. on Friday after the hospital reported the incident. Given the seriousness of the attack, police decided that the bear should be destroyed and deployed specialist wildlife teams to search the area overnight and into Saturday morning.
Despite the search, the bear was not found.
On Saturday, police called off the operation, explaining that several bears live in the area and that officers needed to be certain they were targeting the animal responsible for the attack before authorising its destruction. No further search is currently planned.
Tobias Höglander, the police’s hunting and wildlife coordinator in Västerbotten, said attacks by bears on humans are rare in Sweden and that incidents involving berry pickers are particularly uncommon, with most bear attacks occurring in connection with hunting.
Police are also investigating the incident as a possible workplace accident, as Am Saisuk may have been working as a seasonal berry picker when the attack occurred.
Red dots show where persons were injured or killed by a brown bear and the shades indicate relative bear density (darker shade means higher density), based on densities of bear scats collected in Sweden and Norway for monitoring purposes during 2001–2012. Illustration from Journals.plos.org
