Monthly Archives: October 2015

2015 may be the earliest in many years that W. Hudson Bay polar bears head for the sea ice

Great news for Western Hudson Bay polar bears! Following up from sea ice conditions last week, CIS maps show ice forming all along western Hudson Bay – not a huge amount, but the beginning of the end of the ice-free season, which recently has not occurred until mid-November (Cherry et al. 2013).

Canadian Arctic Oct 29 2015_CIS

There is above-average sea ice coverage in Foxe Basin and Davis Strait, and only slightly below average coverage in the Beaufort Sea (see graphs below). Polar bear habitat is shaping up very nicely indeed across Canada and the US this year.
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Sickening effect of satellite radio collars polar bear researchers don’t want you to see

A report at CBC News (Photo shows polar bear injured by tight radio collar,” Martin Zeilig, 28 October 2015) shows the bloodied neck of a male Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear, taken near Kaktovik, Alaska, whose radio collar is too tight.

polar-bear-radio-collar_CBC Oct 28 2015

Researchers should not be putting collars on young animals and male bears – they know the problems! Who did the USGS have working for them that did not know this or couldn’t tell a male bear from a female? [see below] The other question is: how many more bears are in the same condition but out of sight on the sea ice – or dead due to their injuries? Don’t forget, this is a population that researchers claim is endangered because of climate change but which really declined recently due to thick spring ice in 2004-2006. [SJC – ambiguity fixed]

UPDATE 28 October 2015: 5:41 pm – in a comment under the CBC story, Churchill polar bear guide Kelsey Eliasson wrote (“4 hours ago”):

“This isn’t a he, it’s a she. Saw this bear during our trip, its a female with one cub.

Male polar bears are not radio collared.”

The statement in the CBC article that the bear with the collar is a male thus seems to be an error.  That makes more sense but does not negate the suffering of the animal.

UPDATE 5 November 2015: 8:30 am – I just received an email from a reader who contacted USGS about this bear and with their permission, I have copied the response below (leaving out the USGS contact person’s details), my bold:

Hello xxxx,

I do not believe USGS banded the bear. I have talked with staff at the USGS Alaska Science Center and found that the polar bear in the news was an adult male. The USGS scientists will band female polar bears, but not male bears. If you have questions, see this site. there is a link to the staff on the left. Click it and you will see a list with the project manager at the top. http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/polar_bears/tracking.html

It may be that USGS is accepting the word of one of the experts quoted in the story [Vince Crichton] that the bear is a male and have denounced their involvement on that basis. Obviously, other polar bear researchers must be working in the area, and Geoff York statements (below) suggest a crew from University of Alberta, led by Andrew Derocher.  But if Kelsey Eliasson is right that this is a female with a cub (see above update), it may indeed be a USGS bear, perhaps one who’s collar has stopped transmitting. The plot thickens.
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Beaufort Sea polar bear habitat highest since 2008 at this date

Good news for Southern Beaufort polar bears! Sea ice converging on the north shore of Alaska earlier than any year since 2011 at least, according to NSIDCs regional ice plots (below).

r01_Beaufort_Sea_ts_4km

But wait, their Masie ice maps show it’s actually the earliest since 2008 (although the ice movement onshore was also earlier than 2006 and 2007, see below). And it’s still a full week before the end of October, the first month of Arctic fall (October-December). Lot’s of seal hunting habitat.

This emphasizes the fact that the primary problem faced by Southern Beaufort sea polar bears is not scarce summer ice but by thick sea ice conditions in the spring. Bears photographed near Kaktovik this year were in excellent condition (see here and here, taken by Kelsey Eliasson, Polar Bear Alley). If folks have been seeing starving bears, they haven’t said anything that I’ve been able to find.

Ice maps below.
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Churchill problem polar bear report for 13-18 October 2015

Latest report on problem bears in Churchill, Manitoba, from the town’s Facebook page.

2015 Oct 13_18_at Oct 19_lg

Polar Bear Alert Program Activity Report as of Oct. 19 (click to enlarge):

30 polar bears handled to date this year; 11 bears in the holding facility this week (6 released, including a sow and two cubs). As mentioned in the new Polar Bear Town reality TV show, Churchill officials have been more vigilant and pro-active since the two polar bear attacks in 2013 than they were previously, capturing any bears than come close to the town.

See previous post here for map and background. Last week’s report here.

 

Winter returns to the Arctic – freeze-up 2015 at October 20 expands polar bear habitat

Fall is the season when polar bears that have spent the summer fasting can return to the refreezing sea ice to resume successful hunting. For polar bears, fall is the second-most important time of year for hunting, after spring.

masie_all_zoom_4km_2015 Oct 20

The date when freeze-up occurs across the Arctic varies from place to place and year to year, but the process is well underway this year. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center’s MASIE map for 20 October 2015 (above) shows 7.7 mkm2 of sea ice, up from the annual low of 4.41 mkm2 almost 6 weeks ago.

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BBC perspective on Arviat polar bears – those not included in the last mark-recapture study

In a polite but misleading article today in a BBC magazine (The polar bears are coming to town) about the relationship of polar bears and Inuit in Arviat, Western Hudson Bay, there is no mention of the on-going feud between Nunavut Inuit and Canadian polar bear scientists regarding invasive research.

Churchill_Polar_Bear_2004-11-15 Wikipedia

Nor is there a mention of the fact that according to the most recent research, there has been no trend in sea ice conditions since 2001.
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Western Hudson Bay polar bear numbers are stable, no trend in ice breakup or freeze-up

This needs saying again: the latest study on Western Hudson Bay polar bears reveal the population has been stable since 2004 and there has been no significant trend in either breakup or freeze-up dates since 2001.

Triplets in Wapusk NP from McCall webpage 2013

Environment Canada and the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group concur that the current size of the WHB subpopulation is about 1030 bears. Documents found online indicate a new version of the 2013 WHB mark-recapture report (Lunn et al. 2013) is now available (Lunn et al. 2014) and that a new population survey is planned for 2016. A 2013 story based on false information produced by The Guardian that is still in circulation should be retracted.
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Sea ice is not a stable habitat for polar bears – summarized today in The Arctic Journal

In The Arctic Journal, 7 October 2015: Unstable thinking about polar bear habitat [not my title choice]

Unstable thinking about polar bear habitat_Oct 7 2015 title page

This is a previously unpublished summary, written exclusively for The Arctic Journal, of my peer-reviewed, fully referenced essay on this topic that was published earlier this year by the Global Warming Policy Foundation in their “Briefing Paper” series (#16, June 8, 2015: The Arctic Fallacy: Sea Ice Stability and the Polar Bear), which includes a foreword by Dr. Matthew Cronin, Professor of Animal Genetics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Pdf here.

Here are the essential points, one by one:
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Churchill has polar bears, Victoria has cougars

cougar (aka puma/mountain lion) was captured in downtown Victoria yesterday (my home town), with all the drama given a polar bear attack. No polar bear alert program here, just cougar tracking hounds on standby and officers with guns and tranquilizer darts.

The Globe and Mail has video here.

Victoria cougar location Oct 5 2015

Details and quotes below. CBC story was the only one to include a map, which I have put into polar bear perspective.
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Tracking polar bears – 3 out of 4 S. Beaufort bears on the ice during September 2015

The shore of Alaska is not very important to Southern Beaufort polar bears – most of them stay on the sea ice during the summer and early fall, where they may or may not continue eating. These results of on-going satellite tracking studies by USGS1 confirm results of previous studies.

Tranquilized_pb570_S Beaufort March 2014_USGS

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