Canadian controversy: How do polar bears fare?

Despite global warming, an ongoing study says polar bear populations are rising in the country's eastern Arctic region.

from the May 3, 2007 edition

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"The increase in the population is not a climate-change related issue," Derocher claims. It's the result of "conservation and an increase in the harp seal population," he says.

Canada hosts two-thirds of the world's estimated 25,000 polar bears. Males can grow to be 11 feet long (5 feet tall at the shoulder) and weigh 1,500 pounds. The largest females are 7 feet long and weigh up to 700 pounds. Polar bears evolved from their cousin, the giant brown bears of Alaska, about 200,000 years ago.

Fully grown male polar bears are too big to wear the radio collars that Derocher and his team carry in their helicopter. Instead, they look for young males and females. Derocher says it's harder and harder to find polar bears in the area. Even native hunters say it's increasingly difficult to locate the animals.

Inuit hunters in the eastern Arctic, however, have long disagreed with scientists about polar bear numbers. In small Inuit communities, hunters kill bears that wander too close to human settlements.

The huge arctic territory of Nunavut is 730,000 square miles, bigger than Alaska and almost three times the size of Texas. It has a population of just 26,000, almost all of them Inuit.

Inuit hunters make their own estimates of the polar bear population based on the number of animals they encounter on their travels. Taylor says scientists have ignored the anecdotal evidence of the Inuit, who say bear numbers were rising. Inuits also report more polar bears wandering into their towns and villages, where they are a threat to children.

"I'm pretty sure the numbers [of polar bears] are climbing," says Pitselak Pudlat, an Inuit hunter and manager of the Aiviq Hunters and Trappers Organization at Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. "During the winter there were polar bears coming into town." His community is north of the bear population studied by Taylor.

Derocher worries about Taylor's evidence. Taylor and his team work for the Inuit-dominated government. For cultural reasons, that government wants to preserve hunting and keep polar bears off the endangered species list, Derocher says.

"It's not sport hunting I'm worried about. They're after big males, and there are enough of them for breeding," says Derocher. "But some populations of polar bears do need better protection."

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