Clik here to view.
Foxe Basin aerial survey – a watershed moment for polar bear research, Part 1
While researching the population status of Foxe Basin polar bears I came across an issue that seems to have garnered relatively little attention outside the polar bear community – Inuit objections to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tranquilizing polar bears and meat tainted with drugs
This follow-up to my last post has some new information about drug residues remaining in polar bear meat after the animals have been tranquilized. Regarding the 1-year, Health Canada-imposed ban on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Foxe Basin aerial survey a watershed moment for polar bear research, Part 2
As I outlined earlier this week, Canadian Inuit objected so strenuously to routine mark-recapture methods used by polar bear biologists during the early days of a Foxe Basin population study in 2008...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How long have polar bears – and people – lived around Hudson Bay?
I came across a story in the news yesterday about the discovery of an archaeological site in northeastern Manitoba that brings to mind a post I wrote back in November 2012 on the geological and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inuit resist government requests to tag and collar polar bears in MClintock...
Inuit residents of Cambridge Bay in the Central Canadian Arctic are resisting requests by the Nunavut Government to tranquilize, collar and tag polar bears to assist in their population survey. “A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Western Hudson Bay polar bear population is stable: press release
Slowly but surely, word is leaking out: the Western Hudson Bay polar bear population is stable at ~1000 bears, confirming the good news contained in maps posted on the Environment Canada website a few...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Polar bear biologists miss the mark in new study on invasive mark-recapture...
Apparently, some biologists think that outputs from complex computer models will convince native Arctic residents that invasive mark-recapture work has no long-term effect on the health and well-being...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why is polar bear conservation such a contentious issue?
Are polar bears in decline or not? Who is to blame for the fact that there is no clear answer about how polar bears are doing? Apparently, everyone except polar bear specialists are at fault for the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Polar bear attacks are extremely rare says new study — but the data are...
I did considerable research on polar bear attacks for my thriller of a novel EATEN — which many readers are finding a welcome change from the numbers-and-statistics approach of science — and I have to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nunavut government has a draft plan to deal with unsafe numbers of polar bears
In the news today: “Nunavut Draft Plan Says There Are Actually Too Many Polar Bears In Territory” (CTV News via The Canadian Press, Bob Weber, 12 November 2018). Polar bear eating seaweed near...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Canadian polar bears still not threatened with extinction says conservation...
At recent meeting of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), biologists decided to continue to list the polar bear as a species of ‘Special Concern.’ About 2/3 of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Biologists escalate conflict over Inuit management of polar bear populations
Yesterday, two polar bear specialists and an inept freelance journalist poured gasoline on the already-volatile issue of polar bear management in Nunavut. Quote of the day: “I think there’s a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
State of the Polar Bear Report 2018: Polar bears continue to thrive
Press Release 27 February 2019, International Polar Bear Day New Report: Polar Bears Continue To Thrive Inuit paying the price of rising bear populations The State of the Polar Bear Report for 2018,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
OK in the 80s but not now: ‘seeing more polar bears means there are more bears’
Wait for it, it will come: backlash from polar bear scientists for a statement by an Inuk bear safety guide in Labrador, reported by the CBC yesterday. The guide said there are more polar bears now...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Even with Inuit lives at stake, polar bear specialists make unsupported claims
The standoff between Inuit and polar bear specialists regarding the status of polar bears in Canada is not going to end until someone in authority demands to see the data scientists insist contradict...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Photographer’s claims that Inuit hunting is unsustainable are not supported
A campaign by an anti-hunting Norwegian photographer to destroy the market for legally-hunted polar bears in Canada makes a few disturbingly false claims and an article at National Geographic in which...
View Article
