Susan Crockford
Despite misleading warnings in mid-August that a record number of incidents had already taken place, and that Churchill was on track for a record-number of bear problems this fall, the number of incidents and bears captured so far have been well below other years after the same number of weeks ashore. And while this is shaping up to be the longest ice-free season on record for Western Hudson Bay bears, it may not be a record year for problem bears in Churchill.
“On average, officers receive around 250 calls from residents and detain around 50 bears every year, according to statistics provided to Live Science by the Manitoba government. The record number of bears captured in a single year was 176, in 2003.” LiveScience, 16 August 2023
Problem bear reports
Although the season is far from over, this year after 19 weeks on shore–to 22 October–the Churchill Polar Bear Alert Program has registered a paltry 158 incidents with problem bears (item 2, “occurrence reports to date”) compared to 246 in 2018, and 263 in 2016 at week 19. Only 2017 had a similar number of incidents (148) after 4 months ashore. Note that bears captured are item 3, “bears handled to date.”
In other words, while this year is shaping up to be an extended ice-free season for Western Hudson Bay polar bears due to an earlier-than-usual sea ice breakup at mid-June (at 17 June, about 4 weeks earlier than usual for the last 7-8 years), so far that doesn’t seem to be translating into an increase in problem bear incidents. Even with the ‘zero-tolerance’ for bears near town that’s been normal for the last 10 years, 158 incidents and 12 captures after 19 weeks onshore is a pretty quiet season.
In comparison, 2016 was a late freeze-up year and bears couldn’t depart for the ice until early December. But by the same point in the onshore season at 19 weeks–which was the 3rd week of November in 2016 because most bears didn’t leave the ice until mid-July–there had already been 262 incidents and 41 bears captured:
In 2017–the other low incident season in recent years–by week 19 (third week of November), sea ice was forming and bears were on their way to the ice. By that time, there had only been 148 incidents and 22 captures:
Last four years
Churchill bears from 2019 to 2022 spent 4 months or less on shore, so can’t really be compared to this extended year: bears were only on shore for 16 weeks in 2019, 14 weeks in 2020, 17 weeks in 2021, and 15 weeks in 2022. However, just to show what happens during a short season on shore, in 2019 the second week of November was week 16 and by then enough ice had formed for the bears to leave, and there had been only 138 incidents and 24 captures:
In 2020, the season was even shorter: less than 4 months. Although freeze-up didn’t come until the end of November, the bears hadn’t left the ice until August. By the end of the season, there had been only 116 incidents and 4 captures:
Prospects and consequences of a late freeze-up
This year, based on records about two weeks away from the first week of November, when freeze-up happens some years, this has been a low incident season. However, the season isn’t over yet and ice is not likely to form until late November at the earliest. That’s not the result of human-caused climate change but a strong El Nino, which also delayed Hudson Bay freeze-up in 2016 and 1998/1999.
Most bears have already been onshore for about 120 days. Combined with the early breakup this year, a late freeze-up in early December could mean bears will be on shore for another 7 weeks or about 170 days total, which as far as I’m aware, hasn’t happened before.
And ominously, that’s the new “cut-off” date polar bear specialists have set for catastrophic starvation of male bears (i.e., 171 days).
Peter Molnar and colleagues concocted a model for Western Hudson Bay polar bear survival a decade ago (Molnar et al. 2010) that predicted 28-48% of male polar bears in WH would die if climate change caused the fasting period to be extended from the 120 days (4 months) that were usual during the 1980s to 180 days (6 months) sometime in the future (see also Robbins et al. 2012, which I wrote about here).
Those calculations were revised and used to formulate the scientifically implausible prediction of doom for the future of polar bears published in 2020 (Molnar et al. 2020), which depended on discredited RCP8.5 (“business as usual”) climate scenarios (Burgess et al. 2021; Hausfather and Peters 2020). Based on these predictions, polar bear specialist should be expecting wide-spread starvation of adult males and females with cubs near Churchill if freeze-up is delayed until early December (about 170 days ashore):
“Mother bears cannot fast as long as solitary females due to their reproductive burden; males cannot fast as long as solitary females due to the higher maintenance requirements and lower storage energy of their leaner bodies; and cubs are more vulnerable than yearlings due to their higher reliance on maternal
energy reserves. …in 2015, the fasting period reached 153 days, approaching the conservatively estimated impact threshold for male survival (now ≤171 days), and possibly also for the survival of females with offspring (between 98 and 192 days in 2007; now possibly lower).” [Molnar et al. 2020:733, my bold]
Bears cause problems when they are truly stressed by lack of body fat, so something to keep in mind over the coming weeks is that by the end of the late freeze-up season of 2016 (at week 22, second week of December), there were a total of 386 incidents and 53 captures:
Time will tell what actually transpires this year. I expect that scientists will keep the media posted with updates, have their cameras ready to record the impending catastrophe, and that conservation officers are prepared for problem bear incidents to sky-rocket as the animals become desperate for food.
Or not, if the experts turn out to be wrong, as they almost always are. I suspect WH polar bears have already adapted, via natural selection, to changing sea ice conditions over the last few decades and will therefore weather this challenge relatively unscathed, while polar bear specialists never consider this as a possibility. That’s because I am a expert in evolution and they are not (Crockford 2023). And unlike the conservation-focused experts, I’ll be willing to admit I’m wrong if this really is a devastating season for WH polar bears.
References
Burgess, M.G., Ritchie, J., Shapland, J., and Pielke Jr., R. 2021. IPCC baseline scenarios have over-projected CO2 emissions and economic growth. Environmental Research Letters 16:014016. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abcdd2
Crockford, S.J. 2023. Polar Bear Evolution: A Model for How New Species Arise. Amazon Digital Services, Victoria. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1778038328
Hausfather, Z. and Peters, G.P. 2020. Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620
Molnár, P.K., Bitz, C.M., Holland, M.M., Kay, J.E., Penk, S.R. and Amstrup, S.C. 2020. Fasting season length sets temporal limits for global polar bear persistence. Nature Climate Change 10:732-738. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0818-9
Molnar, P.K., Derocher, A.E., Theimann, G., and Lewis, M.A. 2010. Predicting survival, reproduction and abundance of polar bears under climate change. Biological Conservation 143:1612-1622. http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mlewis/Publications%202010/Molnar-Derocher-Thiemann-Lewis.pdf
Robbins, C.T., Lopez-Alfaro, C., Rode, K.D., Tøien, Ø., and Nelson, O.L. 2012. Hibernation and seasonal fasting in bears: the energetic costs and consequences for polar bears. Journal of Mammalogy 93(6):1493-1503. http://www.asmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1644/11-MAMM-A-406.1
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But what about the BABY PENGUINS?!?! They might be drowning near Antarctica at this very moment!!
Worrying about the Arctic and Polar Bears is SOOO 2010s.
CO2 has already caused the EXTINCTION of Penguins in the Arctic!!!
That’s what Attenborough tells us.
This information is no surprise because all it takes is one year of above-normal polar bear attacks or incursions into populated areas and the alarmists pounce on the occurrences as irrefutable proof that climate change is making the animals more aggressive because their traditional food supplies are becoming more scarce. Fortunately the residents of such areas don’t panic because of such incidents because they’ve seen these variations before and don’t allow irresponsible media hype to spook them.
I predict most predictions will fail. In every field.
I started reading through this and the idea of Polar Bears as sailors getting shore leave suddenly popped into my head. With that analogy in mind, Polar Bears are remarkably well behaved!
I guess I will need to talk to my lawyer about that remark.
One of the funniest things I ever saw was while I was on shore leave in Hong Kong and there was news that a fight had broken out at a bar. We went to see what was going on and it was a bunch of British sailors fighting with each other over a soccer match. When it all calmed down, they all walked off together arm in arm back to their ship singing God Save the Queen.
My comment is not directed to Susan. I could care less what some professor or their lackeys say no matter where they are from Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia or Australia. The only ones I care about are the residents of Western Hudson Bay. They are the ones dealing with the bears every single year, their ancestors before them. They should know what to do and what not to by now. In my home town we have dealt with black bears and mountain lions as long as I can remember. Now grizzly bears are becoming a concern. All things to do with humans are an attractant to these animals. Our garbage, our pets, our livestock, our food for our pets and livestock, the fruits and vegetables we grow, our urban wildlife everything connected to humans can and will be of interest to these predators. Common sense is the key. Our political officials, wildlife officers, law enforcement officers, educators and the list goes on and on all tell us what we should do and not do to limit confrontation. Some people don’t pay attention and suffer for it or worse yet someone else will suffer for their stupidity. The best you can do is take precautions but even doing the right thing all the time does not guarantee you won’t have an unfortunate encounter. Carry bear spray and or a firearm and be prepared to kill an attacking predator if need be.
I recently saw a video of a wildlife officer scaring a bear away…maybe a grizzly…with a pump action 12 gauge using some kind of exploding shell…don’t know if he had any backup if the exploding shells had not worked…he apparently knew from experience that the bear would run away.
Many pump-action shotguns are designed to hold a maximum of 5 shells. We were required to have a wood-plug that limited the actual shooting to three. A wildlife officer could remove the plug and load, say, 2 shells with slugs, then 3 with the exploding shells. If the 3 “big bang” shots don’t scare the animal, then the 2 heavy slugs are there.
Wikipedia has an entry for shotgun slug.
First round or two in the pistol should be a snake load (bird shot) for the unexpected rattlesnake, and the first round or two in the shotgun should be “bear bangers” in case the bear isn’t put off by yelling and chest beating!
At home the pistol loads are hollow points, and the shotgun is filled with buckshot and slugs; two legged rats sometimes escape their urban cages and try to raid the nests of their country cousins!
When I’m hiking or mountain biking I carry a pistol and Bowie knife as a minimum.
Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! Many parts are edible!
As far as I’m aware the residents of Churchill know exactly what to do with Polar Bears and have a system that works, year after year. The only casualties of Polar Bear attacks in that area that I’ve read of in recent years have all been visitors or tourists who have no idea what to do with Polar Bears.
Western circulation blocking. Stationary upper-level lows in the North Pacific and Atlantic and plenty of Arctic air in North America.
This is why I live in Florida.
Perhaps the ideology that polar bears are better off with more ice is simply wrong.
It is. Less ice means more sunlight and more food for the fish. More fish means more seals, and more seals means more food for Polar Bears. They need some ice, I expect, but are far more adaptable than the hand-wringing climate enthusiasts are trying to make out. They seem to be reaching a fairly stable population for the amount of ice and food available so leave them to it, I’d guess.
The cure for inconvenient facts is spin. If there are fewer bear encounters it will be because climate change reduced their numbers. If there are excess bear encounters it will be because climate change reduced their food source. If there are an average number of bear encounters it will because a climate disaster is just around the corner. There will never be a number that isn’t evidence of disaster, at least in the world of catastrophist climate atrologers.