You may have seen this one before: a photo from 1950 of Soviet soldiers feeding polar bears sweetened condensed milk from a tank. There are others, taken about the same time.
Let’s look at the claims being promoted regarding these photos a little more critically.
Continue readingComments Off on Unpacking the claim that photos from 1950 are Soviet soldiers feeding ‘starving’ polar bears
Posted in History, Polar bear attacks
Tagged Chukotka, feeding bears, garbage bears, polar bear, Soviet, Wrangel Island
Three years ago, the Russian village of Belushya Guba on southwest coast of Novaya Zemlya on the Barents Sea got international attention for the dozens of polar bears that had invaded the local dump and some aggressive bears were terrorizing local residents. The phenomenon was of course blamed on climate change by virtually all media outlets largely because there was no sea ice on that coast at the time (as had been true many years before without bear trouble).
This year is a different story completely. It’s only early January and already there is abundant ice along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya; ice in the Barents Sea in general is well up over recent averages and the pack is already converging on Bear Island (Bjørnøya) to the south of the Svalbard archipelago. Ice this far south often brings polar bear visitors to the weather station there but that doesn’t usually happen until March or April.
You’ll find references in previous posts linked here.
Comments Off on Remembering the terrorizing Belushya Guba polar bears: lots of Barents Sea ice cover this year
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Aars, Barents Sea, Bear Island, Belushya Guba, garbage bears, Novaya Zemlya, polar bear, sea ice, Svalbard
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