Stray polar bear found roaming Russian village airlifted back to the wild

A polar bear that was found roaming around a village in eastern Russia, hundreds of kilometres away from its usual habitat, has been airlifted back home.

The exhausted-looking animal apparently travelled on an ice floe from the remote, sparsely populated Chukotkaregion to a village on Kamchatka, about 700 kilometressouth, whenit was found.

Russian emergency authorities on Monday mounted an operation to repatriate the bear.

A member of the response team shot a tranquillizer at the bear and put it in a container and onto a helicopter which flew to the snow-covered Chukotka.

The bear was then released into the wild.

Environmentalists say wild animals such as polar bear are suffering from the shrinking hunting environment and the receding ice as the Arctic is getting warmer.