Canadian polar bears near ‘bear capital’ dying at fast rate | 24CA News
Polar bears in Canada’s Western Hudson Bay — on the southern fringe of the Arctic — are persevering with to die in excessive numbers, a brand new authorities survey of the land carnivore has discovered. Females and bear cubs are having an particularly laborious time.
Researchers surveyed Western Hudson Bay — house to Churchill, Man., generally known as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World” — by air in 2021 and estimated there have been 618 bears, in comparison with the 842 in 2016, once they have been final surveyed.
“The actual decline is a lot larger than I would have expected,” mentioned Andrew Derocher, a biology professor on the University of Alberta who has studied Hudson Bay polar bears for almost 4 a long time. Derocher was not concerned within the examine.
Since the Nineteen Eighties, the variety of bears within the area has fallen by almost 50 per cent, the authors discovered. The ice important to their survival is disappearing.
Polar bears depend on arctic sea ice — frozen ocean water — that shrinks in the summertime with hotter temperatures and varieties once more within the lengthy winter. They use it to hunt, perching close to holes within the thick ice to identify seals, their favorite meals, developing for air.
But because the Arctic has warmed twice as quick as the remainder of the world due to local weather change, sea ice is cracking earlier within the yr and taking longer to freeze within the fall.
That has left many polar bears that stay throughout the Arctic with much less ice on which to stay, hunt and reproduce.
Polar bears are usually not solely vital predators within the Arctic. For years, earlier than local weather change started affecting folks across the globe, they have been additionally the best-known face of local weather change.
Researchers mentioned the focus of deaths in younger bears and females in Western Hudson Bay is alarming.
“Those are the types of bears we’ve always predicted would be affected by changes in the environment,” mentioned Stephen Atkinson, the lead writer who has studied polar bears for greater than 30 years. The analysis was accomplished by way of a joint partnership between the Government of Nunavut and Government of Manitoba.
Young bears want power to develop and can’t survive lengthy durations with out sufficient meals and feminine bears battle as a result of they expend a lot power nursing and rearing offspring.
“It certainly raises issues about the ongoing viability,” Derocher mentioned. “That is the reproductive engine of the population.”
The capability for polar bears within the Western Hudson Bay to breed will diminish, Atkinson mentioned, “because you simply have fewer young bears that survive and become adults.”
