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 Chukotka region to a village on Kamchatka, about 700 kilometres south, when it was found.
Rescue workers release the polar bear somewhere in Chukotka, Russian Far East. (AP Photo)
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.