Tag Archives: Novaya Zemlya

Remembering the terrorizing Belushya Guba polar bears: lots of Barents Sea ice cover this year

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.

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Ten fat polar bears filmed raiding a stalled Russian garbage truck

From the Siberian Times today (20 October) is a story with few facts but a fabulous video of six fat adults and four fat cubs as they set siege to a stalled open garbage truck in the Russian Arctic. It may have been filmed on Novaya Zemlya but that has not been confirmed.

Of course, Novaya Zemlya has had previous problems with bears habituated to garbage, most famously an extended incident in 2019 that was perversely blamed on climate change.

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Svalbard at end of April again has 6th-7th highest sea ice extent & a lot of very thick ice

For the second time this month, sea ice around Svalbard Norway was the 6th or 7th highest since records began in the late 1960s. Pack ice at the end of April still surrounds Bear Island (Bjørnøya) at the southern end of the archipelago, which is a rare occurrence at this date. These conditions document a recurrent pattern of high ice extent and especially extreme ice thickness in the Barents Sea since last summer.

Bear island 8 March 2019_first bear seen since 2011_Bjørnøya Meteorological Station photo SVALBARDPOSTEN

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No joke: Russian scientists marked problem Kara Sea polar bear with T-34

The media are so gullible. So eager are they for a sympathetic polar bear victim that news outlets everywhere carried a story earlier this week about a Russian polar bear that had ‘T-34’ spray-painted on its side. They took the word of Russian polar bear/walrus consultant to WWF and Netflix, Anatoly Kochnev, that this was some kind of cruel joke that meant an untimely death for the bear. Turns out it was nothing of the kind.

T-34 polar bear

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My International Polar Bear Op-Ed at the Financial Post on 27 February 2019

In case you missed it back on 27 Februrary 2019. See the original here (with photos).**

Crockford Financial Post Opinion_photo_27 Feb 2019

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Polar bears driven out of Novaya Zemlya town onto the ice by persistent harassment

The state of emergency in Belushya Guba on Novaya Zemlya is over, according to a report yesterday from the Russian news agency TASS (18 February 2019), as no bears had been spotted over the previous 24 hours.

Belushaya Guba garbage dump_Daily Mail_11 Feb 2019

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Polar bears walking the streets on Novaya Zemlya are habituated garbage bears, not victims of climate change

What a bunch of sensationalist claptrap about the polar bears on Novaya Zemlya but I guess it sells papers and raises donations (WWF and PBI, I mean you).1

Nilsen_when the internet came to Novaya Zemlya_cites my blog post_14 Feb 2019

Seriously, if the bears were coming for us, people in Belushaya Guba would have died already, probably EATEN. These particular bears know there is stored food and refuse available that does not come packaged in human form and they know from experience that humans won’t hurt them. As I pointed out in my last post, these bears have known this since early December, when they chose to stay on land over the winter and ignored the sea ice when it arrived.

Lack of sea ice is not the problem here. These are habituated garbage bears that are no longer safe to have around: the responsible option is to shoot them. It’s harsh, I know, but the population will recover from the loss.

Belushaya Guba garbage dump_Daily Mail_11 Feb 2019

If you suddenly cut off their passive food supply (fence or close the dump, deal more carefully with individual refuse and stored food), all of these bears in the photos and videos being flashed across the Internet will become desperate and truly dangerous. Remember, just last summer an emaciated, desperate bear almost killed a cruise ship guard: he had a loaded gun and was actively looking for bears, yet the bear managed to ambush him. He’d have died if he’d been alone.

Of course the refuse and stored food problem needs to be dealt with, in Belushaya Guba and elsewhere across the Arctic, but these particular bears cannot be saved. Cleaning up these issues takes time, coordination, and money. Ask Churchill, Manitoba, who for years wrestled with these issues before a workable solution was agreed upon. And while few Arctic communities can afford to do it the Churchill way, virtually all must contend with the very real threat of polar bears both inside and outside their communities. Ask the Inuit of Arviat and Naujaat, who each lost a young man last summer to a predatory attack by a polar bear that happened well outside their respective villages and where lack of sea ice was not an issue.

Blaming this on climate change is the Paul Nicklen starving polar bear video all over again. You remember the one, the video that National Geographic got so much push-back about that they had to make a public apology for spreading misinformation?

Do climate change promoters really need another fiasco featuring polar bears?

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Polar bears have been terrorizing a Russian town on the Barents Sea since December

Since early December, a group of 52 polar bears have terrorized the Russian village of Belushaya Guba on southern Novaya Zemlya. The aggressiveness of some of the bears, their boldness in entering local buildings and fearlessness in the face of the usual deterrents has caused the local government to call a state of emergency to help the town residents. Global warming is blamed for the problem but as is so often the case, that claim does not stand up to scrutiny.

Belushaya Guba garbage dump_Daily Mail_11 Feb 2019

Large group of polar bears at the Belushya Guba town dump on Novaya Zemlya, Russia. From the 11 Feb. 2019 story at The Daily Mail.

Belushaya Guba is located on the southwest coast of Novaya Zemlya in the eastern Barents Sea. It is a town of mostly military personnel and their families:

Belushya_Guba_on_map_of_Novaya_Zemlya_SM wikipedia

The predictable claims that this situation is due to global warming are confounded by the fact that the region has not had abundant sea ice by December in more than 30 years, yet this is the first time the town has had such a problem with polar bears. Polar bears in winter can be very dangerous, as they are often lean and desperately hungry. [except these ones are not, see update below]

UPDATE 11 February 2019: The international media have gone mad for this story and some photos are now available. Best series of photos and video is at The Daily Mail, UK (11 Feb 2019: State of emergency is declared after more than 50 polar bears invade Russian town and ‘chase terrified residents’). No new information is available on the story itself but plenty of hyperbole has been added. The photos show how fat and healthy these so-called ‘desperate’ bears are, which makes the claims that global warming is to blame for the crisis even more ludicrous (see the ice charts below). So far, the most over-the-top take on this goes to the Washington Post (11 Feb 2019: A ‘mass invasion’ of polar bears is terrorizing an island town. Climate change is to blame): they went to the most trouble to make the link to climate change and bring up the vilified ‘starving polar bear’ video that National Geographic was forced to apologize for last August and the debunked 2007 prediction that 2/3 of the world’s bears would be gone by 2050 (Crockford 2017). The Guardian‘s effort is weak by comparison, as is CNN‘s. The news outlet (not a blog) Daily Caller has some quotes from this page. Competition amongst bears for scarce natural resources in winter makes dump sites and stored food available around Arctic communities all the more attractive. When polar bear numbers are high, as they are now, this competition can get fierce. It’s no wonder the bears don’t want to leave.

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Polar bears in winter: insights from Behouden Huys, 1596-1597

As a follow-up to my previous post on polar bears giving birth (December is polar bear nativity month) I thought I’d continue the generalized theme of “polar bears in winter.”

polar bear aurora_borealis_3-t2 free

While we don’t really know for sure what non-pregnant polar bears do during the depth of the Arctic winter, we have bits of evidence – some from modern hunters and polar bear researchers but also from Arctic explorers. One explorer in particular comes to mind: William Barents [Willem Barentsz] of Holland, who attempted to reach China via the Arctic Northeast Passage in the late 16th century. On their third voyage (1596-1597), Barents and his crew were forced to spend the winter on the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya (latitude 760N, see Fig. 1) when their ship became trapped in the sea ice. Crew member Gerrit De Veer (1609) kept a journal account of the long, horrifying winter they spent on shore, in a shelter they built with materials salvaged from the ship. They called their winter home Behouden Huys (“the saved house”).

Figure 1. Location of Novaya Zemlya, in the Barents Sea. On the map at left (a), the black square marks the location of Behouden Huys, the over-winter home of William Barents and his crew (1596-97) on Novaya Zemlya (the “track of boats” noted marks the return journey of Barents in the summer of 1597). This is modified from Zeeberg et al. 2002:331. The map on the right is from Wikipedia, for perspective. click to enlarge.

Figure 1. Location of Novaya Zemlya, in the Barents Sea. On the map at left (a), the black square marks the location of Behouden Huys, the over-winter home of William Barents and his crew (1596-97) on Novaya Zemlya (the “track of boats” noted marks the return journey of Barents in the summer of 1597). This is modified from Zeeberg et al. (2002:331). The map on the right is from Wikipedia, for perspective. click to enlarge.

An English translation of De Veer’s journal is now available online and it offers a fascinating glimpse of what it meant to live through that long dark winter under almost-constant fear of attack by polar bears. The Dutchmen were plagued by polar bears almost the entire time they were on Novaya Zemlya (see Fig. 2). De Veer’s notes on these encounters provide a unique perspective on polar bear activities over the Arctic winter – ironically, it is not the havoc the bears caused that provides the most important clue but rather, the timing of when they left Barents and his crew alone.

Figure 2. An engraving from De Veer’s journal conveys the struggle the crew faced in warding off polar bears during their winter stay at Novaya Zemlya. The bears not only stalked and attacked the crew - they got into the food stores on the ship (From Wikipedia).

Figure 2. An engraving from De Veer’s journal conveys the struggle the crew faced in warding off polar bears during their winter stay at Novaya Zemlya. The bears not only stalked and attacked the crew, they got into the food stores on the ship.
(From Wikipedia).

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