Inconvenient rebound in polar bear numbers.
Polar bears not starving, says Nunatsiavut wildlife manager
Geoff Bartlett · CBC News
One of the people who oversees an Indigenous hunt of polar bears says the population is doing well, despite heart-wrenching photos online suggesting some bears are starving.
Every year, the Nunatsiavut government awards polar bear licences to Inuit hunters living in the northern Labrador settlement area.
The Inuit set a quota of 12 polar bears this winter. Nunatsiavut wildlife manager Jim Goudie said all 12 were taken within the first seven days of the season.
Goudie said it’s just the latest evidence that polar bears are on the rebound in northern Canada — a trend he said officials have been recording for years.
“There are lots of signs of bears,” he told CBC Radio’s Labrador Morning. “Lots of bears and a continuation of what we’ve seen over the last three or four years.”
The Nunatsiavut hunt takes place over an area stretching from Cape Chidley at the northern tip of Labrador to Fish Cove Point further south near Rigolet.
…
Healthy numbers, misinformed public
Goudie said prior to a 2007 survey, it was estimated there were about 880 polar bears in the northern Labrador and northern Quebec regions.
However, the study actually found 2,152 animals, a significant increase over the earlier estimate.
Researchers are now two years into a new study, and Goudie said word of mouth indicates the population is continuing to rebound.
“I think our polar bear population is very, very healthy,” he said. “The Davis Strait polar bear population is probably one of the most healthy in Canada, and certainly in the world.”
…
Goudie points to one post he saw recently from National Geographic that showed what appeared to be a starving polar bear, but in reality was an animal that was sick.
Read the full story at CBC
See also our companion story today
Beware of the MSM bearing news.
Really should make a habit of being aware of any news source and validating. Now granted lately it seems anything that spews from the MSM is slanted way against sanity but I wouldn’t get in the habit of trusting any news source.
Bill Powers
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat News.
Sorry Bill, couldn’t resist.
🙂
It would be nice if it started “bearing news”.
That would be un-bearable.
Stop!
Bill Powers
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat News.
Sorry Bill, couldn’t resist.
🙂
Sorry, first one miss posted.
I will have to stop making puns. Some of you folks take them seriously.
I think you are a highly skilled Pun-isher
The Black bear numbers in the mid-atlantic region are doing pretty good too, they are every fricking where, foxes, coyotes and wild turkeys too if anyone cares. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time camping and the such all of these animals were rare to see, now most of them are in my backyard.
Black bears and wolves are becoming a major problem in populated areas of Arizona, along with javelina and Elk. They finally did something about that in Grand Canyon National Park. The Elk were grazing around the village hotels and shops a few years ago. Didn’t see any last year. We did have two antelope run out in front of the West Loop bus just about dark, tho. I was too amazed to snap a picture.
But it’s the Polar Bears that get special attention. Black bears and brown bears, not so much. Just another case of “White Privilege”.
Mainstream media … only sort of. The story was reported in the Newfoundland and Labrador region of the CBC. It’s pretty much guaranteed that the vast majority of the country won’t hear it.
We have gotten to the point where every MSM outlet we got will look at those two bear photos and automatically delete the healthy one, while running with the sick one. Then they’ll have some 20 year old SJW right a headline saying “ALL BEARS LOOK LIKE THIS TODAY!”.
An animal species that have been around 500,000+ years surviving through the mwp and the roman warm period, holcene period, etc when there was much less summer and spring ice than is predicted in 2050 / 2100 when the “real Experts” declare the Polar bears are threatened with complete demise.
“climate scientist ” really do cherrypick their data
“it was estimated there were about 880 polar bears”….of course…..you can’t rely on the same people counting, that make money studying
You missed the other number, today at 2152 bears, a 2.4x increase
I’ll guarantee you those two surveys were made by two different groups of people……guess what group came up with the 880 number
[Found and rescued. -mod]
oh wait…I got it now…..I’m replying to you! I forgot….post it when you have time
How does one “rebound” from an estimate to an actual count?
Even an actual count is an estimate, since you can’t get the bears to fill out census forms.
There is a huge difference between an estimate and an actual count, even if neither are completely accurate. One was done in the field. The other was done on a calculator. To actually say that polar bears grew in numbers by 2.4x from estimate to count is horribly wrong and offends common sense.
…. since you can’t get the bears to fill out census forms….
And if you did get them to fill out a census form you can’t rely on them not to be influenced by Russian propaganda. And we all know the Russians are no so convinced about man made climate change.
MarkW
Has anyone ever asked a Polar Bear to complete a census form?
They might be quite flatterd if someone did.
Y’know, distribute forms, realise they have a voice, create a political party (The Bear Necessities?), run for parliament, represent themselves rather than having numpty human politicians represent them – badly.
Just a thought.
🙂
Just need a Polar Bear Roundup…Funnel them through, tag them, count them and release them back into the wild
You can’t get them to cue up either. Very uncooperative, those bears.
Once again, proof that Polar Bears International and their buddies, manniacal and lewserandowsky are libellous scam artists seeking to defraud fools of their money.
exactly…….guess who did the first survey and came up with 880
Um… Let me see, it must be the alleged researchers who guesstimate their polar bear counts?
Saves time, much cheaper and they always get the guesstimate they like.
Plus, their guesstimates are only for the children, not research or science.
Ergo, the irresponsible greedy Polar Bear researcher thugs and bullies. Oh, and low lifes too.
hint: Reef Relief does not make money by telling the reefs are normal
I think you will find that 880 is 97% of 2152
[??? Common Core math? .mod]
If anyone is motivated to know what potential game abundance is, it would be a resident subsistence hunter. So asking the natives, or anyone else living in the Davis Strait area year round, would have a much better grasp of conditions than a “researcher” visiting the place for a short study.
In plain English: Ursus Maritimus translates to “Sea Bear”.
Liberals–get over it!
Sea Bear? Don’t take it too littorally.
Ugh, that pun is absolutely abyssal!
rip
I thought it was wet and shallow, but hear Rip has gone too deep.
ripshin
April 23, 2018 at 10:54 am
Ugh, that pun is absolutely abyssal!
rip
plane to see
They’re obviously homeless and don’t have healthcare.
If they are now counting 2100 bears, then the next step is to adjust the past and say that most probably there used to be 2500, so they are decreasing rapidly and are in the most terrible danger.
I’ve seen it done with temperatures and with sea level in the past. Why not bears.
Looks like Dr. Thomas Karl will soon become a Polar Bear scientist.
The people who are always there, the Inuit, have more credibility than anyone else. A similar situation happened years ago in the Florida Everglades when the state wildlife agency stated alligators were threatened. The local Miccosukee tribe disagreed, saying there were many more alligators in the Everglades than the Florida Wildlife agency stated. It turned out, of course, the wildlife agency was wrong and the Miccosukee were right.
F&W did the exact same thing with manatees, bears, deer, and cougars
Both Arctic and Antarctic regions bioproductivity are increasing as pCO2 continues upward. 1000 years from now, our ancestors will marvel at how we were able to take a food chain from near-CO2 starvation to abundant productivity as a side effect to our technological innovations that requires abundant energy sources.
Both phytoplankton and sea ice algal food sources are increasing due to enhanced pCO2 at the bottom of the food chain that positively supports the apex predators like orcas, polar bears, and wolves.
Worth a careful read….
The report card:
https://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2016/ArtMID/5022/ArticleID/284/Arctic-Ocean-Primary-Productivity
Joel O’Bryan
“1000 years from now, our ancestors will marvel at how we were able to take a food chain from near-CO2 starvation to abundant productivity as a side effect to our technological innovations that requires abundant energy sources.”
Laughably, done in almost complete ignorance until the greens objected to increasing CO2, then the truth is revealed. CO2 is good for the planet.
Strange that at the very point CO2 was at it’s lowest in the planets history, man happened along, and discovered fire. Thereafter he progressed to liberating all that naturally, but accidentally sequestered CO2 back out into the atmosphere, helping plants to grow and life to flourish.
I’m not religious, but that’s damn near a miracle.
Thank you Joel and HotScot!
Indeed. When considered as a whole, Life consumes CO2.
And, when reflecting on the current atmospheres of three sister planets:
– Venus 95% CO2
– Earth 0.04% CO2
– Mars 95% CO2
The statement is nearing the past tense as: Life consumed CO2.
Strange that at the very point CO2 was at it’s lowest in the planets history, man happened along, and discovered fire.
The leading anthropolgy hypothesis on why our homoAncestors steadily evolved such a large brain size is exactly due to ancient climate change swings across the eastern African ecosystems. Each rapid climate change drove natural selection on adaptation to the rapidly changing ecosystems. Selection for fitness with increasing communication, cognitive, and social skills in the evolving hominids are what led to homo sapien and homo neanderthalis leaving Africa in pulses starting in the 200K to 150K years ago up to the more recent late Pliestocene and Holocene migrations out of Africa across Eurasia.
From wikipedia:
“Both Neanderthals and living humans are thought to have evolved from Homo erectus. In the earliest known migration wave into Eurasia dated to 1.81 million years ago (Ma), Homo erectus left Africa most probably via the Levant and reached Georgia (fossils of Dmanisi). Hominins had reached China by 1.7 Ma and Iberia (Spain) by 1.4 Ma.”
Of course, 1.8Mya was half a million years into the onset of the Earth’s cyclical cold glaciations and warmer interglacials that brought rapid ecosystem changes across eastern Africa, such that adapt of perish became the selection of the fittest filter on homo for the next ~2 millionn years leading to us.
Thomas Homer
Considering planet earth was hovering around 180ppm some time ago, and the extinction of all meaningful life on it happens around 150ppm, we all dodged a rather large bullet, and if there is someone upstairs, he/she presumably had a rapid rethink.
As we’re still only some 250ppm from extinction, I’m happy to see atmospheric CO2 increase to 1,500ppm, without giving it a thought.
My understanding (I’m a layman, not a scientist) is that doubling of atmospheric CO2 is logarithmic, and to me that means that as CO2 increases, the initial temperature rise, as observed in laboratory conditions, doesn’t accelerate anything like CO2. In other words, whilst the initial 400ppm (as is now) shows some heating of the planet (barely) as CO2 increases, temperature increase becomes insignificant, and inconsequential.
So, we reach a couple of degrees higher in temperature terms, the vast frozen wastelands of Siberia and Canada thaw and become productive agricultural land. Equatorial deserts also become more productive with plants resistance to drought and pests enhanced by CO2.
If sea levels rise, well sorry, but if you’re complacent enough to live on the beach or prominent river estuary (Like the river Thames where property attracts a considerable premium) then if you’re swamped, may hell mend you for buying your property there, are they daft or what?
Meanwhile we’ll all be carrying machete’s to fight our way through the overnight vegetation growth to reach our cars, which will of course, by then be all electric (ahem).
I wonder if Sub Mariners are allowed plants on board. With up to 6,000ppm CO2 (I believe) within a week a boat would resemble a scene out Day of the Triffids.
The 2017 update is here.
https://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2017/ArtMID/7798/ArticleID/701/Arctic-Ocean-Primary-Productivity
It tells of similar increased bioproductivity in Arctic waters like the Labrador Sea., which of course supports the Labrador polar bear populations.
Increased primary productivity (photosynthetic planktons and algae) support the coastal and open ocean pelagic fish populations. Increases in summer time open water (less ice) means phytoplankton can take advantage of the normal upwellings and summertime time sunlight to significantly increase their biomass (as measured by chlorophyll-A levels from satellites.)
Those fish populations feed upward into the entire web of predator marine mammals and land based predators that prey on seals, etc. Essentially more CO2 makes more, and fatter, polar bears. That’s the politcally incorrect conclusion that can only be avoided through the use of biased science.
Yes, the whole “CO2 is bad for the Earth” is about as valid and sensible as “oxygen is bad for human health.” The pseudo-science is THAT bad.
Descendants. We would be the ancestors.
You are correct my error of course. Writing the thought without thought to the words.
It’s a common error. Everyone knew what you meant.
But I’m an unreconstructed, pedantic English language N@zi.
By 2023 there were so many ‘existentially-denied’ polar bears, that they increased arctic albedo during the summer months, leading to a plunge in global temps, and fears of a new glacial and pending global mass-extinction of everything. “It’ll cost you all trillions of $$$ to create enough Community Organisers to save the world from this most appalling desaster”, remarked President Oprah, during her Nobel Virtue-Signalling Prize acceptance speach, awarded for doing absolutely nothing useful or of value, just for reading lame scripts.
It’s all connected.
Yeah, new browser version update yesterday … form-field stuff up fixed.
I love the auto-posting ‘feature’, before you can finish editing a field.
That was a surprise from CBC. Have to give them a little credit.
Gerald Machnee
The worm turns?
Too bad there was no commenting enabled on the story. It would have been entertaining to see the usual CBC readers process this information in a calm, reasonable way. /s
I am stunned that this appeared on anything to do with the CBC. It is so-o-o far off-message.
Is it possible the CBC will start to offer a little balance in their reporting? At least as far as the wildlife is concerned. I am looking forward to more.
Wow! That’s a new one. South Africa eh!
I know! Just following Crispin’s tag is a geography lesson…
I’m pretty sure he’s not real though. Nobody could be THAT insensitive to the environment to travel so much…
rip
The MSM apparently believes that polar bears retire to old bears homes when they get old, where they are fed and cared for, and eventually die peacefully in their sleep.
That they get too feeble, sick, or injured to hunt, and eventually starve to death if they aren’t eaten by other bears first, is too gruesome to consider. Only global warming could possibly account for that picture.
I thought they just sat around old bear homes and talked to other old geezer bears about how many warm seals they had.
(my apologies to Willis for stealing on this one) ;-))
The most laughable story was last year when scientists were fretting when approximately 100 polar bears descended into about a square mile searching for food in a dump with no aggression. Sciencey alarmists concluded that the dwindling population was starving and exhausted.
Even Captain Obvious “Hey, there’s actually a hundred polar bears in one square mile, in smelling distance of a dump – how is that possible if they are nearly extinct?” couldn’t brighten the dim bulb.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
– Upton Sinclair (A line he used frequently in his opening speeches to audiences.)
Tim
You’re labouring under the expectation of there being a bulb at all.
Our green cousins aren’t the brightest of folk. Perhaps we are undergoing the next evolutionary step of mankind, when ‘Green Fanatics’ are left on the evolutionary ladder, like Neanderthals.
Mind you, I believe Neanderthals had many redeeming features.
No aggression? No way those bears are starving.
I have heard “bear biologists” refer to bears as stomachs with brains. They are going to go anywhere there might be food, and they are going to go for the easiest food available. Dumps are the equivalent of fast-food drive-thrus.
The only reason to “fret” is that the bears may continue to frequent areas where humans live, which generally leads to humans freaking out and bears being killed.
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.”
–Mark Twain
You all have been misreading this:
“Goudie said prior to a 2007 survey, it was estimated there were about 880 polar bears in the northern Labrador and northern Quebec regions.
However, the study actually found 2,152 animals, a significant increase over the earlier estimate.”
They estimated 880 bears BEFORE they went out and counted. What they found was their estimate was light by 1272 bears. So, if there are now 2.4 times as many as in 2007 there are around 5170 bears there. That bears watching… (I couldn’t help it)
Dave in the UP
Bears consideration.
🙂
Or might bear additional study. ;-D
The bear on the right looks like he’s at risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and gout.
Well I never, WWF have change their tune:
https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/polar-bears-and-climate-chang
No admission here of their errors; false & misleading campaigns!
Worse, they now want a ZERO-CARBON World
https://www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/climate
Yes their new headline is Zero-carbon . . .
ZERO CARBON world?!
Well, let’s start with removing them. After all, the world can’t be “zero carbon” as long as those asshats are still breathing. Then, once they’re gone, we can just change our mind about their stupid agenda, and go back to normal.
HotScot April 23, 2018 at 12:01 pm
In answer to your question as to whether submariners would be allowed plants onboard? The answer is yes.
They do not last however, not because of CO2 or the abundance thereof, but because there is no sunlight.
6000ppm would be 0.6% of the atmosphere. The most I’ve ever seen CO2 content was 4% or thereabouts (40000 ppm), and you know what, it never got hot and nobody died. Sppoky that isn’t it.
“it never got hot” – really?! What with all that “re-radiating” infrared and all?!
LOL, you would think that should tell somebody something.
Trust the Inuit, they’ve been hunting polar bears for 1,000 years
http://hq-wall.net/wall_preview/26976/Bjork_430015.jpg
Inuit know more about polar bears than how TV works
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1468870/thumbs/o-BJORK-facebook.jpg