On the 8th July, the first of almost two dozen tagged or collared polar bears came ashore in Western Hudson Bay (WH) under unusual sea ice conditions. How does this compare to previous years?
Image above is from last year (6 July 2021): we haven’t yet had a sighting from the live cams on the shore of Wapusk National Park near Churchill reported at Explore.org.
Continue readingComments Off on First tagged W Hudson Bay polar bear comes ashore
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, collared, Derocher, Hudson Bay, onshore, polar bear, sea ice, tagged
Hudson Bay has been oddly slow to freeze this year, which has led to a predictable bit of hand-wringing from certain biologists reiterating prophesies of polar bear population collapse. However, since 2009, the last time that freeze-up was anywhere near this late was 2016. In other words, far from this years’ late freeze-up being a picture of ‘the new normal,’ conditions in 2021 are actually unusual compared to the last twelve years.
Moreover, considering that 2021 fall ice formation for the Arctic in general is well ahead of 2016 (and every year since, except 2018), it’s hard to see why human-caused global warming caused by ever-increasing CO2 emissions explains the slow freeze-up of Hudson Bay. Timing of Hudson Bay freeze-up has always been highly variable from one year to the next (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017: Fig. 3, copied below). The average freeze-up date in the 1980s was 16 November ± 5 days, while from 2005-2015 this had shifted about a week to 24 November ± 8 days (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017:230). This year freeze-up was later than usual but last year and the three years before that the ice froze as early as it did in the 1980s. Cue the zombie apocalypse.
UPDATE 11 December 2021: see chart below from Andrew Derocher on the position of tagged WH bears at 10 December.
Continue readingComments Off on Promoters of polar bear catastrophe in Hudson Bay gloss over recent good ice conditions
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, science, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, Derocher, freeze-up, ice-free season, PBI, polar bear, sea ice, time on shore, western hudson bay, York
The attack happened yesterday afternoon (10 August) about 2:30 PM local time near the community of Sanirajak (listed as Hall Beach on ice charts), which is in Foxe Basin, Nunavut (population about 800). There are few details yet on the human victims of the mauling other than that they were two women and a man. All three were badly injured. They are now in hospital and expected to survive.
It appears the bear died as a consequence of the attack but there has been no mention of its condition, age, etc., or the circumstances of the attack. There is no ethical reason for blaming this broad-daylight attack on lack of sea ice (although some will try), since there is abundant ice in the region at the moment, as the charts below show. Expect an update as the story unfolds.
Comments Off on Foxe Basin polar bear attack leaves three people seriously mauled, airlifted to hospital
Posted in Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged attack, Derocher, Foxe Basin, Hall Beach, mauling, polar bear, Sanirajak, sea ice
The chart below shows what sea ice thickness over Hudson Bay was like at the first week of May in a so-called a ‘good year’ (2019) – when polar bears came off the ice in excellent condition late in the summer and left early in the fall (‘thick first year ice’ is dark green and indicates ice greater than 1.2m thick):
Hudson Bay ice conditions this year appear to be shaping up to be as good or better than last year for polar bears yet specialist researchers and their cheerleaders have still been claiming that bears in this region – Western and Southern Hudson Bay – are doomed because of poor ice conditions. It’s no wonder they still haven’t published the data they’ve been collecting on polar bear body condition and cub survival over the last 15 years or so (Crockford 2020). With most field work cancelled for this year, what’s their excuse for not getting that done?
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Comments Off on Sea ice more than 1.2m thick over Hudson Bay portends a good year for polar bears
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged body condition, Derocher, Hudson Bay, polar bear, polar vortex, sea ice, thick ice, threatened
Polar bear researcher Andrew Derocher says it takes four years of good sea ice conditions to recruit a polar bear from birth but implies that 2019 is the first year in decades that conditions for bears have been ‘good’ in Western Hudson Bay. He thinks he can get away with saying this because he hasn’t published any of the data on body weight and body condition he’s collected on these bears over the last 25 years (apparently, whatever funding agency pays for his research does not require him to publish the data he collects).
But independent observations such as dates of ice freeze-up in fall, ice breakup in summer, dates and condition of bears recorded onshore, suggest he’s blowing smoke: at least five out of five of the last sea ice seasons for WH bears have been good. That means we should be seeing more bears in the next official population count.
Comments Off on Western Hudson Bay polar bears in great shape after five good sea ice seasons
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged body condition, breakup, Derocher, fat bears, freeze-up, Hudson Bay, polar bear, sea ice, thriving
One of the first of hundreds of polar bears expected to come off the sea ice of Hudson Bay along the west and south coasts was captured on video on 5 July. This is only the first wave, as there is still so much ice remaining that most of the bears are likely to remain offshore: not because there is so much food available (few seals are caught at this time of year) but because the ice is where they are most comfortable.
Comments Off on First polar bear spotted off the ice in Western Hudson Bay is fat and healthy
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, Churchill, condition, Derocher, explore, fat, migration, polar bear, sea ice, western hudson bay
January is the first month of the Arctic winter, the season when most polar bears really struggle to find enough to eat.
Here is what the sea ice looked like around the Arctic at the end of this month.
Compare to last year:
Comments Off on Abundant polar bear habitat across the Arctic at the start of winter
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, Barents Sea, Canada, denning, Derocher, East Coast, Franz Josef Land, polar bear, sea ice, Svalbard, winter
Earlier this year, I challenged a journalist to ask to see the data used by Andrew Derocher and his colleagues to support their repeated claims that Western Hudson Bay polar bears are having trouble surviving. It almost happened.
David Rose, writing for The Mail on Sunday, has produced an excellent feature on the conflict between Nunavut Inuit and biologists about polar bear management, got Andrew Derocher to tell the truth about current polar bear health and survival.
Or, to be more precise, to waffle a bit on his standard message of doom:
“Even Prof Derocher, who is convinced the bears’ long-term future is bleak, accepts that ‘the wheels are not coming off yet’, while ‘some bear populations are doing fine’. In West Hudson Bay, there has been ‘a recent period of stability’, he says, and though ‘we were seeing starving bears, starving cubs on land, that seems to have slowed down’. Then again, the computer models ‘are not great on the 5 – 10 year time-frame’, and it was possible that although the Arviat bears might look healthy now, they may be about to ‘fall off a cliff’.” [my bold]
This concession by Derocher suggests that Western Hudson Bay bears indeed are thriving, because he’s the guy who holds all the data. But he couldn’t help adding that disaster might be just around the corner.
But did he actually produce the data that show what’s been happening with cub survival or the body condition of females since 2004? Apparently not — but his admission that conditions are not as bleak as he continually portrays them suggests he is covering for data that says the same: polar bears in Western Hudson Bay are doing just fine and Inuit are right to be worried.
This may be as good as it gets unless the people of Nunavut can force Derocher to show his data.
Read the whole story here: “Why all you’ve been told about these polar bears could be WRONG: Animals driven to the edge of their natural habitat by shrinking ice have become one of the defining images of climate change, but Inuits who know the predators have a very different story.” (The Mail on Sunday, David Rose, 30 December 2018).
Comments Off on Derocher admits Western Hudson Bay polar bear population may not be declining
Posted in Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks, Population
Tagged Arviat, attacks, body condition, cub survival, Derocher, estimates, fat, Hudson Bay, polar bear, population, problem bears, sea ice
Despite a wild claim that a “slow Arctic freeze” this year increases the risk that polar bears will become extinct, sea ice charts show ice returning earlier than it has for decades everywhere except the Svalbard area of the Barents Sea. That’s good news for pregnant polar bears. Although Svalbard is without ice, that’s been true for so many years that pregnant Svalbard females long ago abandoned the use of islands they used in good ice years and now make their dens in the Franz Josef Land archipelago to the east (which is still within the Barents Sea subpopulation region).
Polar bears give birth around 25 December each year, so pregnant females prefer to be snug in a safe den by around the end of November at the latest. That’s been possible for all regions of the Arctic this year, including the Barents Sea — because sea ice returned to Franz Josef Land weeks ago, even though Svalbard is still ice-free.
Major denning areas in Russia, including Wrangel Island, have been surrounded by ice since the middle of the month, allowing pregnant females that did not remain on shore over the summer to return to make maternity dens. Elsewhere, bears that have been confined to shore over the ice-free season (such as along Hudson Bay and Baffin Island in eastern Canada) returned to the ice to hunt seals weeks ago after the earliest freeze-up in more than two decades.
Comments Off on No extirpation looms for Svalbard polar bears: no pending catastrophe in Norway
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Aars, Barents Sea, Derocher, extinction, extirpation, polar bear, Russia, sea ice, Svalbard
In the news today: “Nunavut Draft Plan Says There Are Actually Too Many Polar Bears In Territory” (CTV News via The Canadian Press, Bob Weber, 12 November 2018).
Polar bear eating seaweed near Churchill, Manitoba (November 2012). Lorraine Brandson photo.
From the Canadian Press story:
“There are too many polar bears in parts of Nunavut and climate change hasn’t yet affected any of them, says a draft management plan from the territorial government that contradicts much of conventional scientific thinking.
The proposed plan — which is to go to public hearings in Iqaluit on Tuesday — says that growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety and it’s time Inuit knowledge drove management policy.
“Inuit believe there are now so many bears that public safety has become a major concern,” says the document, the result of four years of study and public consultation.”
I’ve noted previously that there were two fatal polar bear attacks in Hudson Bay this summer. Both of them happened outside local communities and both happened early during the ice-free period (when bears would have been onshore for only a few weeks). Neither incident can be reasonably blamed on lack of sea ice, an extended ice-free period, or lack of management of problem polar bears within or near communities. The bears involved in the August attack were described as being in good condition.
Update 13 November 2018: See The Guardian‘s take on this story, by a different writer. Despite potential to talk to other polar bear specialists about this issue, only Derocher is quoted. Is no one else talking? “Polar bear numbers in Canadian Arctic pose threat to Inuit, controversial report says” (The Guardian, 13 November 2018).
Update 14 November 2018: See a new CBC story on Inuit perspectives on this issue. “Nunavut community says Inuit lives need to be protected over polar bear population” (CBC News, 14 November 2018).
Comments Off on Nunavut government has a draft plan to deal with unsafe numbers of polar bears
Posted in Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged attacks, climate change, Derocher, Foxe Basin, Hudson Bay, hunting, Inuit, management, polar bear, problems, sea ice, too many bears
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