Tag Archives: Polar Bear Technical Committee

Status of Canadian polar bears updated map from Environment Canada

Posted on May 24, 2018 | Comments Off

During a meeting of polar bear range states (Canada, Russia, Greenland, Norway, and the USA) in late January 2018 to discuss conservation issues, Canada — home to ~2/3 of the world’s polar bears — included in its presentation an updated population status and trend map approved by the Polar Bear Technical Committee in its presentation. This 2017 map replaces one from 2014 but is not yet available on the Environment Canada website.

Lunn et al 2016 EA cover image WH bear

UPDATE 11 June 2018: More recent versions of population and status assessment maps, published by Environment Canada 6 June 2018, conclude Southern Hudson Bay and Western Hudson Bay subpopulations have “likely declined.” See 11 June post here for more details and copies of the maps.

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Posted in Conservation Status, Population

Tagged Canada, ecoregions, map, polar bear, Polar Bear Technical Committee, population, sea ice, status, trends

Supporting document for Canada’s polar bear status maps reveal surprises

Posted on March 17, 2015 | Comments Off

My request to Environment Canada in early December 2014 for the documents supporting their polar bear status maps has finally generated results.

In an email dated 2 March 2015, I received the document produced by the EC Polar Bear Technical Committee (PBTC). I waited to see if it would be appended to the webpage where the maps were posted last year (reported here and here). However, as of today, that has not happened, so I am posting it here. There are some rather striking differences that may surprise you.

UPDATE 22 March 2015: A copy of the letter from the Director General of the Canadian Wildlife Service that accompanied the document below, which I forgot to include, is here. It states that the once a new status table has been compiled (provided below), “it is reviewed by the Polar Bear Administrative Committee and then becomes a public document.” The implication is that the reviewed document has not yet been produced.
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Posted in Conservation Status, Population

Tagged baffin bay, Canada, declining population, Environment Canada, IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, Northern Beaufort Sea, PBTC, polar bear, Polar Bear Technical Committee, population estimates, sea ice, Southern Beaufort Sea, USGS

Polar bear specialist says there are 800 polar bears in W Hudson Bay, gov’t says ~1,000-1,500

Posted on November 5, 2014 | Comments Off

Activist polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher (University of Alberta) may have gone too far this time. In an interview with Yahoo News, Derocher is quoted as saying:

“When I first started here about 30 years ago the population was about 1,200 bears and now we’re down to about 800,” team member Andrew Derocher, a biology professor at the University of Alberta, said in a phone interview from the tundra outside Churchill.” [my bold]

Figure 4. Environment Canada's "Map 3: 2014 Canadian Polar Bear Subpopulation and Status Map," original here.

Environment Canada’s “Map 3: 2014 Canadian Polar Bear Subpopulation and Status Map,” original here. Click to enlarge.

However, the Polar Bear Technical Committee of Environment Canada says differently: it estimates there are ~1000-1,500 bears in Western Hudson Bay (WH) and that the population is probably stable, as their new status map (dated June 2014, copied above) shows. A recent (2014) peer-reviewed paper by Stapleton and colleagues (discussed here) provides the data for that estimate.
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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population

Tagged conservation status, Derocher, Environment Canada, Hudson Bay freeze-up, polar bear, Polar Bear Technical Committee, population estimate, western hudson bay, WWF

Status of Canadian polar bear populations has been changed – more good news

Posted on October 28, 2014 | Comments Off

According to maps dated June 2014, Environment Canada (EC) has changed the trend status of several Canadian subpopulations — without any announcement or publicly-available documents explaining the basis of the changes.