From the live cams installed on beluga tour boats running near the Churchill River, we have some good photos of a few fat polar bears onshore in Western Hudson Bay.
These bears were attracted to the remnants of a beluga carcass with nothing much left on it (lower right in the photo) and stayed around for at least a few days. The female with her cub-of-the-year was remarkably tolerant of an adult male nearby.
Continue readingComments Off on Some of the first polar bears onshore in Western Hudson Bay are in excellent condition
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged beluga, breakup, Churchill River, polar bear, sea ice, western hudson bay
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
Does the following statement stand up to scrutiny – i.e. a fact check – of the scientific literature on polar bear ecology?
In the 1980s, “the males were huge, females were reproducing regularly and cubs were surviving well,” Amstrup said. “The population looked good.”
[Steven Amstrup, Anchorage Daily News (Borenstein and colleagues), 5 November 2021: ‘How warming affects Arctic sea ice and polar bears’]
In short, it does not.
Continue readingComments Off on Conditions were not golden for polar bears in the 1980s despite what activist expert claims
Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Population
Tagged Amstrup, body condition, Chukchi Sea, climate change, cub survival, litter size, polar bear, Polar Bears International, prediction, western hudson bay
All of the bears within view of the coastal web cams on the shore of Wapusk National Park near Churchill on Western Hudson Bay seem to be in very good shape this year, despite having come off the ice a few weeks earlier than they have over the last few years. Despite this, problems with bears in Churchill seem to have been below average this year. Some great action can be seen via several Explore dot org live web cams that are streaming from shore right now.
No ice forming yet along the west coast of Hudson Bay as of today, which is a bit later than it has been for the last few years. That means some of these bears will likely have spent almost 5 months onshore by the time they get back on the newly-formed ice and resume hunting seals.
Comments Off on Polar bear watching in high gear near Churchill as everyone waits for the sea ice to form
Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Churchill, climate change, fall, migration, PBI, PBSG, polar bear, predictions, sea ice, western hudson bay
I’ve been told that another complete aerial survey of the Western Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation (from the Nunavut to Ontario boundaries) was conducted in August this year and that the bears have been hanging out further south than usual. It will be years before the results of the population count are published, of course (especially if it’s good news) but my contacts also say virtually all of the bears are in great condition again this year.
This is significant because W. Hudson Bay bears are one of the most southern subpopulations in the Arctic (only Southern HB bears live further south) and older data from this region is being used to predict the future for the entire global population based on implausible model projections (Molnar et al. 2020). And scary predictions of future polar bear survival are often taken to be proxies for future human disasters (see ‘Polar bears live on the edge of the climate change crisis‘), a point that some activists will no doubt make in the coming weeks, as the long-awaited UN climate change bash #26 (COP26) gets underway in Glasgow, Scotland on October 31.
Continue readingComments Off on No signs of a climate emergency for W. Hudson Bay polar bears this year ahead of UN climate meeting
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Polar bear attacks, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged beluga, body condition, breakup, climate change, CoP26, freeze-up, migration, polar bear, predictions, sea ice, western hudson bay
Although since 2015 at least the Polar Bear Alert Program in Churchill Manitoba usually issued and published its problem bear reports weekly during the ice-free season, this year has been an odd exception. Two reports in early July, then nothing. Yesterday, there was a dump of reports that had been compiled on 1 September and 7 October, according to their metadata.
There are still a few weeks missing, including the two most recent weeks but at least now we have a more complete picture of what’s been going on with problem bears in The Polar Bear Capital of the World that can be compared to previous years. Such reports in various forms go back to the late 1960s, although only those from recent years have been publicly available (Kearney 1989; Towns et al. 2009).
Continue readingComments Off on Churchill problem polar bear reports finally completed and posted online
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Alert Program, Churchill, ice-free season, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, western hudson bay
What the heck is happening in Churchill? Either the Polar Bear Alert Program has produced no reports or they have simply not been posted. It’s been more than 6 weeks since the last published report.
Comments Off on No updates from Churchill polar bear alert program since July 12
Posted in Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks
Tagged attack, Churchill, ice-free season, Manitoba, polar bear, problem, western hudson bay
Here is a short video from last week on the shore of Wapusk National Park of a fat sow and her fat cub. At this time of year, the Cape Churchill caribou herd (population ca. 3,000) is wandering by with their new calves. Unlike deer, both male and female caribou have antlers. The bears and the caribou simply ignore each other most of the time. Very rarely, a bear will chase one and even more rarely, catch one. However, the bears will scavenge caribou kills made by wolves, which are their primary predator.
Polar Bears and Caribou Explore org 18 August 2021
Comments Off on Western Hudson Bay fat polar bear video from the shore of Wakusp National Park
Posted in Life History
Tagged Cape Churchill, caribou, ice-free season, polar bear, terrestrial foods, Wapusk National Park, western hudson bay
As of Monday (19 July), more polar bears had come ashore near Churchill and on the shores of Wakusp National Park but some are still out on the bay. The pattern of ice breakup this year means most bears will come ashore well south of Churchill and make their way north over the summer and fall. There have been two Churchill ‘problem’ bear reports so far but not one for this week, so I’ll go ahead and post without it.
Comments Off on Western Hudson Bay polar bears: still some out on the sea ice, some causing trouble
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, Churchill, Hudson Bay, polar bear, predictions, problem bears, sea ice, western hudson bay
So far, the first evidence I’ve seen of a bear ashore in Western Hudson Bay was one photographed near Churchill Manitoba on 28 June (below).
However, by 5 July, the first of six collared females from Andrew Derocher’s WH study (below) had also come ashore, as did others along the shore of Wapusk National Park. This is not ‘early’ – just earlier than the last few years. Like last year, however, there is still a fair amount of sea ice left on the bay and some bears seem to be choosing to stay out longer on what ‘experts’ describe as unsuitable habitat. As you can see on his bear tracker map, Derocher uses a filter that shows only ice >50% concentration because he and his buddies have decided that bears so dislike anything less that they immediately head to shore as soon as ice levels fall below this threshold.
Continue readingComments Off on Polar bears have begun to come ashore on Western Hudson Bay
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Churchill, polar bear, predictions, sea ice, Wapusk National Park, western hudson bay
You must be logged in to post a comment.