A polar bear who wandered out of the northern part of the Northwest Territories down to Fort McPherson is back home again after renewable resource officers trapped the animal on the Peel River and sent it back north.

'I really have no idea what was going through (her) head,' Ian Wortells, an N.W.T. renewable resources officer, who was one of the two officers to trap the bear, said this morning.

The first report of the polar bear came in on Aug. 3 when it was seen wandering along the Dempster Highway. The next report came in last Wednesday, when she was just about a kilometre outside of Fort McPherson, and close to area campgrounds, Wortells said.

She said when the bear was finally live-trapped on Friday, she appeared to be relaxing beside the Peel River.

She was then transported by helicopter back to the Arctic.

'It's back in its home country,' Wortells said.

While the bear didn't cause any problems for humans nearby, Wortells noted polar bears are usually the most dangerous species of bears to humans because they are carnivorous.

In some cases, they've been known to stalk humans, Wortells said.

The only other recorded instance of a polar bear wandering away from their traditional homeland in the N.W.T. occurred in 1993, when a bear wandered south from the Arctic Ocean area.

A tooth was extracted from the animal to determine her age, though Wortells estimates her age to be between three and four years.