Polar Bears heading inland

From a government listserve:

Once again, polar bears were very much in the news this month.

Lawsuit. The Secretary of Interior's decision regarding listing polar
bears under the Endangered Species Act was due January 9.
Unfortunately, Secretary Kempthorne has yet to issue the decision. As
a result, three conservation organizations, including the Center for
Biological Diversity, have filed a lawsuit (Associated Press 3/10/08).

Inspector General Inquiry. The Department of Interior's inspector
general has initiated a preliminary investigation concerning the
delay in the Department's polar bear listing decision (Associated
Press 3/7/08).

Alaska Polar Bear Killed 250 Miles from the Coast. After making the
longest inland trek ever documented -- 250 miles from the ocean -- a
polar bear was killed near Fort Yukon Alaska. The previous inland
record was 125 miles (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner 3/29/08; 3/28/08).
Congressional Hearing Scheduled. Senator Boxer has scheduled an April
2 Congressional hearing regarding the delay in the polar bear
listing. It is unclear whether Secretary Kempthorne will voluntarily
attend (Associated Press 3/21/08).

Hope. In the February 2008 edition of Alaska Magazine, USGS's leading
polar bear biologist, Dr. Steven Amstrup, stated: "There is nothing
in our studies that indicates this outcome [extinction] is
irreversible." If we significantly decrease our greenhouse gas
emissions in the next 40 years, we can maintain a population of polar
bears in the Canadian Archipelago. Then when the Arctic Ice Cap
recovers, polar bears in Alaska "can repopulate. There's still time"
("The Bone Pile," Alaska Magazine 2/2008).

I know where he was headed

...to Washington, where there sat some tasty morsels in certain office buildings. Just to do a little "lobbying".

I realize this has nothing to do with hiking, but on April 1 I just couldn't resist.

Weatherman

i am aware of this, and it concerns me, as i will be hiking/canoeing in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) this June. i am hiking from the headwaters of the jago river to kaktovik, an inuit village on the beaufort sea. i will be hiking w/ my sister, whose passion is the preservation of ANWR. we are both experienced hikers, and are finding as much info. as we can about both grizzlies and polar bears as we can. we hope we will not see a polar bear on our hike.

dottie

dottie said:

i am aware of this, and it concerns me, as i will be hiking/canoeing in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) this June. i am hiking from the headwaters of the jago river to kaktovik, an inuit village on the beaufort sea. i will be hiking w/ my sister, whose passion is the preservation of ANWR. we are both experienced hikers, and are finding as much info. as we can about both grizzlies and polar bears as we can. we hope we will not see a polar bear on our hike.

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It is often worth carrying a rifle when in polar bear country. I'd check with the rangers to see what they advise.

PS. Please don't turn this into a pro/anti-gun thread. Polar bear country is different from the lower-48--they happily eat people.

Doug

DougPaul said:

It is often worth carrying a rifle when in polar bear country. I'd check with the rangers to see what they advise.

PS. Please don't turn this into a pro/anti-gun thread. Polar bear country is different from the lower-48--they happily eat people.

Doug

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.....a very high-powered rifle, or probably a better choice would be a shot gun, which is what we always carried on northern Baffin. Also, take lots of "crackers" (loud noise makers that are launched like fire works) and flares to try to scare away the bear(s) first. Pepper spray is definitely only a last resort for bears. As polar bears move farther and farther inland, they seem to be less and less wary of humans, and they are always hungry. For my first three decades of glacial geological research on Baffin, I never saw a bear. But, during my last field season on northern Baffin in 2003, polar bears were all over the place in late July and early August, because the sea ice is breaking up earlier, reforming later, and overall becoming less extensive. Without as much sea ice, polar bears are not able to fatten up on their favorite diet, namely seals. Dare I say in this forum that the cause for sea ice demise is GW?

You mean GWB?

Closer to Home

Polar Bears have migrated south to Newfoundland. CBC reports one (appears to be a young male) on Fogo Island off the north-east coast on Saturday.

The town of St. Anthony on the tip of the Long Peninsula had white visitors recently as well. In this area, they occassionaly are seen on the flow ice offshore. I am told that it is rare for polar bears to come on shore like this one.

If you go into the wilderness and end up killing a species of animal that is threatened or endangered, you had better have a really good reason to go there in the first place, more than just having a 'fun' trip.

Raymond said:

You mean GWB?

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whoops, sorry about the confusion; GW = global warming (aka climate change).

Tom Rankin said:

If you go into the wilderness and end up killing a species of animal that is threatened or endangered, you had better have a really good reason to go there in the first place, more than just having a 'fun' trip.

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Excellent point! And, a good reason to take a shot gun (for short range protection) rather than a high-powered rifle (long-range protection). If you need to shoot a polar bear in self defense, you must have strong evidence that your life was threatened, such as a torn apart tent, etc. You still may be charged $10,000 Cdn in Nunavut Territory (not sure about NWT), as a limited number of polar bear hunting licenses are handed out each year to the Inuit in a lottery (based on polar bear ecology, settlement size, etc.). The licenses then are commonly sold to big game hunters (mostly Europeans) for $10,000 or more each, not including additional income generated for guiding. I have not seen any of these licenses for sale on EBay or StubHub yet. The last few field seasons that I was North, we employed Inuit guides and used their hunting cabins for protection from polar bears. Even if an Inuit kills a polar bear, he or she had better have a license, or find a friend who has a license.

dottie said:

i am aware of this, and it concerns me, as i will be hiking/canoeing in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) this June. i am hiking from the headwaters of the jago river to kaktovik, an inuit village on the beaufort sea. i will be hiking w/ my sister, whose passion is the preservation of ANWR. we are both experienced hikers, and are finding as much info. as we can about both grizzlies and polar bears as we can. we hope we will not see a polar bear on our hike.

dottie

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Dr. Dasypodidae said:

The last few field seasons that I was North, we employed Inuit guides...

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dottie, this would be my approach if I was considering that hike. Hiking experience, bear info and hope is not what I would pin my fate to. I'm familiar with firearms and would not consider taking on that responsibility myself, even if that's possible to do, on a hike/canoe in Alaska.

We were in the Gates of the Arctic (a few hundred miles southwest of ANWR) in August. One of our party had been Grizzly hunting and Caribou hunting in the past, and he was designated to carry a firearm. It never made it out of the pack.

I think that Polar Bears and Grizzly Bears are vastly different in how they perceive humans. Grizzlies (and browns & blacks for that matter) don't want to encounter a human, in fact in a week in the wild we saw only footprints as we were intentionally scaring them off. A Polar Bear has no fear of anything, and would probably go looking for the source of the noise.

Tom Rankin said:

If you go into the wilderness and end up killing a species of animal that is threatened or endangered, you had better have a really good reason to go there in the first place, more than just having a 'fun' trip.

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As others have hinted, the gun is for last-resort self defense against a predator that will happily kill and eat humans, not hunting.


BTW, the book "Conquering the Impossible", by Mike Horn includes a section where an Inuit is teaching Horn polar bear body language. (Horn was often out in conditions where the temps were so low that a gun would be nonfunctional.)

Doug

DougPaul said:

As others have hinted, the gun is for last-resort self defense against a predator that will happily kill and eat humans, not hunting.
Doug

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Doug, I think Tom's point is that they'd have to be prepared for the unfortunate possibility that their "passion for the preservation of ANWR" could result in the death of bear. A passion for preservation that results in adverse impact would weigh heavy for a long time.

dug said:

We were in the Gates of the Arctic (a few hundred miles southwest of ANWR) in August. One of our party had been Grizzly hunting and Caribou hunting in the past, and he was designated to carry a firearm. It never made it out of the pack.

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It's a good thing he didn't need it then.

A good friend who has been hiking and hunting in Montana for the past 30 years, who has crossed paths and been followed by grizzly bear while packing out game, and deals with them regularly as a RV Park Manager in Yellowstone, now only carries a large can of good pepper spray in a holster, ready to use.

Bwing wubba buwwets, wike da DEC wainjers use !

Interesting aside: I read that polar and brown bears are VERY closely related.
Polars evolved from brown populations to exploit the new arctic habitat that formed during the Pleistocene (Ice ages). Despite the adaptive differences (appearance, build, fur, dentition) they can interbreed and produce hybrid offspring with mixed characteristics.

I wonder, in the worst case of arctic meltdown, whether they would simply go extinct, or instead be genetically re-assimilated into the brown bear population.
Maybe depends on how much the habitats (sic) overlap.

MR

Here's an interesting link:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/arcticbears/evolved.html

Chip said:

Doug, I think Tom's point is that they'd have to be prepared for the unfortunate possibility that their "passion for the preservation of ANWR" could result in the death of bear. A passion for preservation that results in adverse impact would weigh heavy for a long time.

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Exactly! Well put!

Chip said:

Doug, I think Tom's point is that they'd have to be prepared for the unfortunate possibility that their "passion for the preservation of ANWR" could result in the death of bear. A passion for preservation that results in adverse impact would weigh heavy for a long time.

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Take your choice of adverse impacts: you kill the bear or it kills you...

<soapbox>
From an ecological standpoint it would be preferable that it kills you. (Humans are not an endangered species.)
</soapbox>

Perhaps you should have said "passion for visiting ANWR". It can be preserved with or without tourist visits.

A good friend who has been hiking and hunting in Montana for the past 30 years, who has crossed paths and been followed by grizzly bear while packing out game, and deals with them regularly as a RV Park Manager in Yellowstone, now only carries a large can of good pepper spray in a holster, ready to use.

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From what I have read, grizzly bears and polar bears tend to treat humans differently. Defenses that work for grizzlies don't sound that effective against polar bears.

Doug

moonrock said:

Interesting aside: I read that polar and brown bears are VERY closely related.
Polars evolved from brown populations to exploit the new arctic habitat that formed during the Pleistocene (Ice ages). Despite the adaptive differences (appearance, build, fur, dentition) they can interbreed and produce hybrid offspring with mixed characteristics.

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Alaskan brown bears are a variant of the grizzly. Thus the polar bear evolved from the grizzly.

I wonder, in the worst case of arctic meltdown, whether they would simply go extinct, or instead be genetically re-assimilated into the brown bear population.
Maybe depends on how much the habitats (sic) overlap.

Click to expand...

Could be either. As I understand it, interbreeding in the wild is rare (perhaps for behavioral reasons) , so my guess is that the polars are more likely to go extinct.


The polar bears found inland may simply be driven by hunger to explore new territory in the hopes of finding food.

Doug

DougPaul said:

From what I have read, grizzly bears and polar bears tend to treat humans differently. Defenses that work for grizzlies don't sound that effective against polar bears.

Doug

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Good thing I'm all caught up at work...here's some more reading on the subject.