Tag Archives: M’Clintock Channel

Good news: Gulf of Boothia and M’Clintock Channel polar bear survey results

Final reports for two Canadian subpopulations reveal the number of polar bears in M’Clintock Channel has more than doubled since 2000 while Gulf of Boothia as remained about the same despite moderate declines in summer sea ice cover. All of the survey results were published online yesterday (16 November 2020) and I was alerted to the posting this morning via email by a Nunavut employee.

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Polar bear researchers try very hard to make good news in Kane Basin sound trivial

In an astonishing display of under-selling good news, the authors of a new paper announcing that Kane Basin polar bears are doing well have avoided mentioning that the population increased substantially since the 1990s and insist that any benefits will be short-lived.

Kane Basin population size at 2013 was 357 (range 221 – 493), up from 224 (range 145 – 303) in 1997. That’s an increase of 59% based on a 2016 recalculation of the 1997 population estimate of 164 (Crockford 2020) – it would have been a 118% increase otherwise.

Money quote: “We find that a small number of the world’s polar bears that live in multiyear ice regions are temporarily benefiting from climate change.” Kristen Laidre, lead author of Transient benefits of climate change for a high‐Arctic polar bear (Ursus maritimus) subpopulation

Both the paper and the press release also claim, despite acknowledging that there is no evidence for this conclusion (“the duration of these benefits is unknown“), that this good news will probably not last because computer models say beneficial conditions might not persist beyond the end of the century.

As always, if you’d like to see this paper, use the ‘contact me’ page to request a copy (it’s paywalled).

UPDATE 25 September 2020: News just out from Nunavut this morning, “New Nunavut polar bear surveys point to “currently healthy” populations in M’Clintock Channel and Boothia Bay.” The survey report for M’Clintock Channel (mentioned in the post below) and neighbouring Gulf of Bothia has still not been made public but this announcement suggests that population numbers in these subpopulations have also increased by some amount that will be similarly discounted as unimportant.

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Expert reveals size of another Canadian polar bear subpopulation is increasing

In case you missed it buried in the details of my rebuttal two weeks ago about Facebook labelling a short PragerU polar bear video as “false information”, in his review of the video (18 May 2020) Canadian polar bear biologist Ian Stirling revealed that a recent survey of M’Clintock Channel polar bears documented a population increase. The problem is we have no scientific details about the survey – apparently completed four years ago, in 2016 – because the final report has not been made public (COSEWIC 2018, pp. 42-43; Crockford 2020).

bear-on-snowbank_Radstock_Stirling

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Inuit resist government requests to tag and collar polar bears in MClintock Channel

Inuit residents of Cambridge Bay in the Central Canadian Arctic are resisting requests by the Nunavut Government to tranquilize, collar and tag polar bears to assist in their population survey.

“A female polar bear and her two cubs dash across the ice near Gjoa Haven, where the polar bear hunt has been limited for nearly 15 years. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)” Story here, also by Jane George.

“A female polar bear and her two cubs dash across the ice near Gjoa Haven, where the polar bear hunt has been limited for nearly 15 years. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)” Story here, also by Jane George.

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M’Clintock polar bear survey’s first year plagued by fog in an area thick with heavy ice

“Blizzards, we had fog — we had to sleep in the helicopter, on the sea ice one night, because we couldn’t fly anywhere,” Markus Dyck, senior polar bear biologist with the GN, told Nunatsiaq News Sept. 5.”

Polar bear with dart_bear_570_2012 Kane Basin_M Dyck photo

Fog was the theme of polar bear research this summer in Queen Maud Gulf, otherwise known as the M’Clintock Channel polar bear subpopulation region.

The ice has been heavy in that region as well, according to a the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and reported yesterday in another story (Heavy pack ice in NW Passage ice creates tough conditions this year: Pack ice clogs Queen Maud Gulf).

For maps showing where M’Clintock Channel and Queen Maud Gulf actually are, see the maps — and more quotes — below.
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Sea ice, beluga whales, and polar bear densities in the Gulf of Boothia

As I discussed in my last post, the Gulf of Boothia subpopulation in the central Canadian Arctic has the highest density of polar bears anywhere in the world. The question is, why?

For example, is the sea ice in the Gulf of Boothia region so markedly different from its nearest subpopulation-neighbor, M’Clintock Channel (Fig. 1), that it accounts for the wide disparity in polar bear densities between the two? The differences, remember, are dramatic: Gulf of Boothia, 18.3 bears per 1000 km2 vs. M’Clintock Channel, 1.9. And while M’Clintock Channel may be low in part due to recent over-harvests (see footnote 1), even the density before over-harvests occurred in M’Clintock Channel were only 4.7, compared to 10.4 bears per 1000 km2 in Gulf of Boothia (see Table 1 in previous post).

Today, I’ll take a look at sea ice and ringed seal habitat in the Gulf of Boothia and M’Clintock Channel, as well as information from a study on polar bear diets, which together shine some light on why the Gulf of Boothia is such a great place for polar bears.

Figure 1. Map showing the side-by-side relationship of M’Clintock Channel and the Gulf of Boothia. From Barber and Iacozza (2004: Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Map showing the side-by-side relationship of M’Clintock Channel and the Gulf of Boothia. From Barber and Iacozza (2004: Fig. 1).

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Gulf of Boothia, unheralded Arctic utopia, has the highest density of polar bears worldwide

The issue of polar bear population density (# of bears per 1000 km2) came up a few posts ago, during my discussion of the new Davis Strait population study by Lily Peacock and colleagues (here). Since the various polar bear subpopulations across the Arctic are so different in size, calculating the density of bears in the various regions generates an interesting metric of how well the regional populations are doing relative to each other.

Almost 20 years ago, Taylor and Lee (1995) did just that: they determined the density of polar bears in the various Canadian subpopulations, as of the 1990s. Surprisingly, the ‘leader’ among those, by a wide margin, was one of the smallest in geographic area: the Gulf of Boothia. Located in the central Canadian Arctic (see Figs. 1 and 2 below), in the 1990s, tiny Gulf of Boothia supported a density of 10.4 polar bears per 1000 km2, the highest density of all regions examined.

 Figure 1. The Gulf of Boothia (circled) is right in the middle of the Canadian Arctic. In terms of geographic area, it is one of the smallest of all 19 subpopulations worldwide: at only 170,000 km2, only the Norwegian Bay and Kane Basin subpopulation regions, also in Canada (just to the north of Gulf of Boothia), are smaller at 150,000 and 155,000 km2 respectively (Vongraven and Peacock 2011). The Gulf of Boothia supports the highest density of polar bears known.Modified from map of polar bear protected areas provided by Environment Canada.


Figure 1. The Gulf of Boothia (circled) is right in the middle of the Canadian Arctic. In terms of geographic area, it is one of the smallest of all 19 subpopulations worldwide: at only 170,000 km2, only the Norwegian Bay and Kane Basin subpopulation regions, also in Canada (just to the north of Gulf of Boothia), are smaller at 150,000 and 155,000 km2 respectively (Vongraven and Peacock 2011). The Gulf of Boothia supports the highest density of polar bears known. Modified from the map of polar bear protected areas provided by Environment Canada.

But this density value for Gulf of Boothia was based on the 1986 population estimate of 900 bears – what is the most current figure?

For that, we need an updated population assessment. That was done in 2000 and it generated an estimate of 1,592 ± 361 bears (Taylor et al. 2009).

Taylor et al. (2009:791) said this about their assessment:

Our results suggest population size had increased steadily under a harvest regimen of approximately 40 bears/yrand added, “Barber and Iacozza (2004) found no trends in Gulf of Boothia sea ice conditions or ringed seal habitat suitability indices in the interval 1980-2000.

In other words, despite there being no trend in either sea ice conditions or habitat for seals – and a yearly harvest of 40 bears – polar bear numbers in the Gulf of Boothia increased significantly (by almost 700 bears) during the twenty years between 1980 and 2000. Even if the 1986 estimate of approximately 900 bears was somewhat less accurate than the more recent one, the fact that tiny Gulf of Boothia can support 1,592 bears is surely a remarkable feat.

Using this new population estimate and the same area of ‘available habitat’ used by Taylor and Lee in 1995, I calculated the most recent density at a spectacular 18.3 bears per 1000 km2! [note this is exactly what Peacock et al (2013) did to get their density value of 5.1 bears/1000 km2, discussed here.] But I didn’t update just Gulf of Boothia, I did them all.

The updated density values for Gulf of Boothia and several other Canadian subpopulations are listed in Table 1 below. Note that aside from Davis Strait, as far as I know these density figures have not been published elsewhere: you’re seeing them here for the first time.

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