Problem bear reports confirm Churchill polar bears are in excellent condition

Now that all bears are ashore for the season, the folks at the Polar Bear Alert program in Churchill note in their report for week 7 (21-27 August, 2017) that the bears ashore are in excellent condition (confirming reports on the first bears ashore in July):

Churchill PB reports_week 7_ Aug 21-27_2017_Aug 28

Rather marked contrast to the pessimistic spin on conditions from the field a few months ago:

[yes, a few bears fail to make it through the winter, especially young bears; but that has always been the case — it’s not a sign of human-caused global warming catastrophe]

Last week’s problem bear report also confirmed news from the Churchill Polar Bears website a few weeks ago that showed several images of very fat bears:

Churchill_PolarBears_FAT bear post_21 Aug 2017

See below for last year’s report for week 7 and this year’s report for week 8 (28 August-3 September). Western Hudson Bay polar bears that come ashore near Churchill, Manitoba are starting their third month on land this week, out of the five months or so they have spent ashore in recent years (about 3 weeks more than in the 1980s, no longer than they did in 2004 — conditions have not been getting worse).

Compare the above to last year (2016) at the same time (below), when there were many more problem bears (8 bears in jail (item 9) in 2016 vs. 4 in 2017; 80 reports (item 2) in 2016 vs. 54 in 2017):

2016 Aug 22-28_week 7

Looks like a typo in the report for week 8, 2017 (28 August – 3 September, see below), as item 2 (“total number of polar bear occurrence reports to date: 45”) is a smaller number than the previous week shown above (“54” — it should be the same or larger).

Churchill PB reports_week 8_ Aug 28 to Sept3_Sept7 2017_possible typo

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