For years, the people of Kaktovik, Alaska, have had polar bears wandering in each autumn.
This community on Barter Island, on the Arctic coast of Alaska, has just 239 human inhabitants, who depend on whaling hunts in autumn to stock up on enough food to make it through the brutal winter.
This, many believe, is what draws the polar bears in - to a spot on the shore they call the Bone Pile, where the whale carcasses are dumped.Some conservationists, however, say the problem has become more rife in recent years, and that the bears are arriving earlier and earlier, due to the dwindling sea ice.
Bears wandering into the town have become such a problem of late that a polar bear patrol now sweeps the streets.
Now another problem is being added to the "pile": careless tourists, who are heading to the remote village for their ultimate bear snaps.Mayor Nora Jane Burns is worried that, while the locals are familiar with these unpredictable creatures and thus know how to handle them, tourists may not.
"Some people try to go out to the Bone Pile or go [walking on their own]," she told ABC News. "They don't really understand they are wild animals.
"If they get mauled or killed, it is on us, and most people don't understand that."..