PR Disaster

Polar Bear Killed
First they're killing people, now they're killing polar bears.

BP caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history, while killing 11 people, now they've killed a polar bear which is an endangered species. BP has not been having a good year.

This female bear was killed on Aug. 3 by a guard working for BP's security. The bear died of its wounds 11 days after it was shot. The guard tried shooting the bear with a gun that would startle the animal and scare it off without hurting it, but when this didn't work he instead shot it with a real gun which caused the wound that the bear eventually died of.

The spokesperson for BP's response to this was, "This is not the outcome intended and we feel very badly that this incident had occurred.

The company states that they are changing their policies so this won't happen again.

However, how can they do this? From a PR point they did everything they could do after the fact. The apologized, said it was an accident, and promised it wouldn't happen again. The only wat to avoid it from happening in the first place was to ban the use of lethal weapons among the guards for BP. However, that would bring up the problem of the safety of the guards. Would they be in danger from the polar bears, rather than the other way around. If this polar bear would not have been killed, would the guard have? It is hard to say how this situation could have been handled better, but it does seem that BP has done everything in it's power to control the situation, unless they could tell us how they are ensuring that it won't happen again. Another way to avoid this problem is to stop drilling for oil where endangered species are living and rather to respect the environment.