Posted onDecember 7, 2025|Comments Off on Polar bears and Arctic sea ice status
Positive news on the Arctic front as far as polar bears are concerned so far this year, with no reports of dead or dying bears, or of horrific attacks on humans that I’ve heard about. Not much to talk about but here’s what I’ve found.
Sea ice in Hudson Bay is forming rapidly while according to NSIDC, the Arctic Basin is filled with ice. Ice has also moved well into the Bering Sea, the Barents and Kara Seas, and Davis Strait. NSIDC say they have discontinued their monthly sea ice reports due to lack of funding, although under the current federal government administration, such budget cuts were likely tied to their inability to consistently produce these reports without pushing a human-caused climate change narrative of impending catastrophe.
Posted onSeptember 12, 2024|Comments Off on Churchill seemingly unworried about polar bears, fails to post problem bear reports on social media
We know transparency’s gone out the window for many public officials, but still: Since early August, I’ve been checking daily for Problem Polar Bear Reports issued by the Churchill Polar Bear Alert Program managed by Manitoba Conservation. This morning (12 September), five reports were posted at once on the Town of Churchill website, dating back to first of the season for the week of August 5-11, see image below.
It’s apparent that the intent of these reports is in part public safety: to raise awareness of the potential threat of wandering polar bears around the town of Churchill because of the language that appears on virtually every report: “stay vigilant”, “be bear smart,” “be bear aware,” etc.
However, the X account for Town of Churchill seems to have been abandoned (last post 19 April 2024), which suggests the town is confident no residents or tourists would benefit from Alerts on X that polar bears are ashore:
The town’s Facebook account seems to be their only method of public communication yet even there, there have been no Polar Bear Alert reports posted this summer.
Oddly, even though it is now apparent from the just-released reports that one bear got so close to town that it had to captured and put in the ‘polar bear jail’ the week of 5-11 August — for the public’s safety — the only safety announcement the town issued that week was a ‘heat warning’ on 12 August:
I guess we are to assume that whoever is running this account – or the town council, or the mayor – believes that a day or two of hot weather (which Churchill gets regularly most years) is more dangerous to public safety than a massive predator wandering around town.
I can only conclude that keeping residents and tourists in the dark about potential threats from local polar bears is one way that Churchill is now adapting to climate change (from CBC News, 10 September 2024):
Bears Onshore and Effective Sea Ice Breakup dates
It is apparent from the wording of the Churchill reports that even by the last week of August this year, all bears were not yet off the ice, since they say only that “most bears” were on shore the week of 26 August to 1 September (see next section).
That suggests the last bears came ashore this year at least a week later than they did in 2020 (at 21 August), which at the time polar bear specialist Andrew Derocher presented as an anomaly (see tweet below). Compare to the situation last year here.
The last report I’ve seen from Derocher (via X) for 2024 on the status of his teams’ tagged females is that many of them (11/29 or 38%) were still on the ice as of 8 August (posted 11 Aug):
Derocher referring to this an “amazing” year that’s “similar” to the 1980s probably doesn’t tell the half of it, since he hasn’t posted any maps since then (as of noon, 12 September).
This effectively keeps secret the date when the last of these females bears actually came ashore, which is in any case a biased microcosm of the entire subpopulation. In other words, we can expect that if 40% of tagged female were still on bits of remnant ice at 8 August, there will have been many more bears, especially males, out there as well – which of course he never mentions.
He also never mentions that satellites under-report the amount of ice at this time of year by as much as 20% because of the effects of melt-water sitting on ice, but we’ve come to expect that.
Oddly, a recent study tried to explain the importance to survival of the recent phenomenon (since about 2015 or so) of bears staying out on melting bits of remnant ice rather than heading immediately to shore when the ice coverage over Western Hudson Bay drops below 50%. They suggested this behaviour was largely confined to male bears because they had to make up for feeding missed during the breeding season (McGeachy et al. 2024).
Females, alternatively, appear to respond to break-up in WH by coming onshore approximately 3 weeks after the mean ice concentration in WH reached 50%, … However, suitable habitat was still present elsewhere in the Bay and appeared to be used by a portion of WH prime age males. [McGeachy et al. 2024: 494, where “prime age males” are aged 5-19 years.]
However, these authors never mention the data reported by Derocher every year showing fairly significant numbers of tagged females lingering on tiny chunks of ice well into August, even though Derocher is a co-author. Funny, that.
Problem Bear Reports 2024, Weeks 1-5
Week 1, 5-11 August
Week 2, 12-18 August
Week 3, 19-25 August
Week 4, 26 August-September 1
Week 5, 2-8 September
References
McGeachy, D., Lunn, N.J., Richards, E.S. and Derocher, A.E. (2024). Sea ice influence on male polar bear survival in Hudson Bay. Arctic Science 10, 483-498. https://doi.org/10.1139/as-2023-004 Open access.
Comments Off on Churchill seemingly unworried about polar bears, fails to post problem bear reports on social media
Except for the lying and obfuscation that most of us have come to expect, I’ve mostly been left to reiterate that polar bears are not “canaries in the coal mine” indicators of climate change and to point out that Arctic sea ice extent and polar bear survival are not inextricably tied. For example, in some specific areas of interest, like Western Hudson Bay, there has not been a consistent decline in sea ice over the last few decades and bears are not attacking people at increased rates because they are desperately hungry. In other areas, like the Svalbard area of the western Barents Sea, sea ice has declined dramatically in recent years yet polar bears have not been attacking people more than usual.
Contradictions and failed predictions abound.
All in all, a rather boring year for the anticipated implosion of polar bear health and survival, despite my constant tracking of publicly-available information. That said, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all again for your continued support, and especially those who have donated hard-earned cash over the last few months: your support makes it possible for me to continue my work keeping polar bear science honest. Together, we have made a difference and I know it’s worth the fight. Because if we let evidence-based science die without challenge, we lose our ability to make sense of the world.
Posted onOctober 26, 2023|Comments Off on Churchill so far has few problems with polar bears despite predictions of a record bad year
Despite misleading warnings in mid-August that a record number of incidents had already taken place, and that Churchill was on track for a record-number of bear problems this fall, the number of incidents and bears captured so far have been well below other years after the same number of weeks ashore. And while this is shaping up to be the longest ice-free season on record for Western Hudson Bay bears, it may not be a record year for problem bears in Churchill.
“On average, officers receive around 250 calls from residents and detain around 50 bears every year, according to statistics provided to Live Science by the Manitoba government. The record number of bears captured in a single year was 176, in 2003.” LiveScience, 16 August 2023
Posted onAugust 16, 2023|Comments Off on Conservation officers misleading the public about polar bear problems in Churchill
Canadian government-funded media outlet CBC ran a story this morning about problem polar bears in the town of Churchill, Manitoba, the self-described “Polar Bear Capital of the World” that contains some very misleading statements from Manitoba Conservation officers.
Breakup of sea ice on Hudson Bay was earlier this year than it has been in more than a decade (17 June) and some people are trying to hype the significance of this phenomenon to support a tenuous link to human-caused climate change, even though bears out on the ice this spring were reportedly in good condition and one of the problem bears captured on 8 August was also in good condition (a male weighing 910 lbs, photo above). Unfortunately, reports for similar early breakup years in the early 2000s have not been made public. However, I’ve been keeping track of these Polar Bear Alert Program Reports since 2015 and have read the available literature about their history: these records simply do not corroborate the statements in this CBC account.
Posted onApril 19, 2023|Comments Off on ‘Less ice means more conflicts with polar bears’ narrative not supported by scientific evidence
In another failed prediction, a new study on the number of polar bears killed in self-defense in Svalbard, Norway did not find the expected correlation with lack of sea ice or more tourists (Vongraven et al. 2023). Contrary to expectations, fewer bears were actually killed in self-defence as sea ice declined between 1987 and 2019.
Money Quote from the abstract:
“…ice cover had no significant impact on the odds for a [polar bear] kill.”
“Poor ice conditions for polar bears at Svalbard this year. Low ice will make tough hunting conditions this coming spring. Time to plan for more human-bear conflicts unless conditions change.” [13 Feb 2023 tweet, my bold]
Posted onFebruary 17, 2023|Comments Off on Low mid-winter polar bear habitat in Barents Sea spawns warnings of more human-bear conflicts
There’s abundant sea ice in the Bering, Greenland and Labrador Seas, although less than usual in the Barents Sea because strong winds drove the ice north. Any time there is a bit less sea ice than usual the catastrophists begin caterwauling but this time the rhetoric is a little different.
Posted onJanuary 4, 2023|Comments Off on Inuit in Arctic Canada now observing higher numbers of polar bears, says government report
A 2021 publication by the government of Canada released last month called Species at Riskin Nunavut says the region is “now observing higher numbers of polar bears“, and that management goals are “more focused on maintaining or reducing numbers in communities and in sensitive areas (i.e. bird colonies)“. Local Inuit are said to be “concerned about the increasing number of encounters and property damages” caused by polar bears.
Polar bear in Arviat, Nunavut, 3 October 2022. Chris Mikijuniak photo.
Polar bears in Canada are considered a species of ‘special concern’ (COSEWIC 2018), not threatened as they are in the USA. See the map of Nunavut below.
Posted onApril 30, 2022|Comments Off on Explaining abundant polar bear sightings on the East Coast as an upshot of sea ice loss is absurd
Last week, a senior producer at CBC News, in order to concoct a timely story for ‘Earth Day’, attempted to explain the high number of sightings of polar bears this April in Newfoundland and Labrador, compared to the last two years, as a consequence of climate change and its handmaiden, loss of Arctic sea ice.
Title: ‘With an extinction threat looming, no wonder polar bears are at our door — and on the roof: there’s a grim reason why polar bears have been frequently showing up in coastal communities’. CBC News, 23 April 2022
The problem with this narrative is that the East Coast had much reduced sea ice in 2021 and virtually no polar bear sightings in Newfoundland and none in Labrador. There was more ice in 2020 than 2021 but also few bears. This year, ice extent was similar to 2020 for most of the region but polar bear sightings were up considerably.
In fact, the two years with the most sightings and problems with polar bears since 2008 were 2017 and 2018: in 2017, sea ice was exceptionally thick in April (although average in extent) and by June the sea ice was so thick and enduring that the Newfoundland fishing fleet couldn’t get out for spring openings; 2018 was another year of average sea ice extent and had even an even larger number of sightings than 2017, in Newfoundland especially (Crockford 2019:32). This suggests the sea ice vs. polar bear correlation on the East Coast since 2008 – if there even is one – may be the opposite of that stated in the CBC article: less ice usually means fewer bears onshore in Newfoundland and Labrador and more ice often means more bears.
Posted onMarch 31, 2022|Comments Off on Newfoundland polar bear sighting two days ago: why my novel was set on Fogo Island in March
On 29 March, there was a sighting of a polar bear on Fogo Island near the community of Tilting that prompted an official warning to residents. Although this bear caused no problems so far, that hasn’t always been the case and it’s a useful reminder that this is why I set my polar bear attack thriller EATEN in this location, at this time of year. If you haven’t read it, or given it as a gift, now might be the perfect time! In Canada here and the UK here.
From a review of EATEN by polar bear-human interaction specialist Doug Clark (June 2016):
Susan Crockford has not only written a fun novel that gets readers thinking, she has probably done polar bear conservation a real service. Because of how politicized polar bears have become as symbols of climate change, fiction is the only arena where one can really present this kind of scenario right now.
Sea ice conditions off Newfoundland on 28 March:
Comments Off on Newfoundland polar bear sighting two days ago: why my novel was set on Fogo Island in March
Watch polar bear habitat reform in the Canadian Arctic: “last 10 days” Canadian Ice Service animation (works anytime) HERE.
See Quote archive for details.
polarbearscience 
You must be logged in to post a comment.