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All Polar Bears Articles
Two Nunavut communities will be test sites for polar bear-proof steel food caches.
Sarah Medill, the Department of Environment’s specialist on polar bear deterrents, said the department has purchased several steel garbage bins for use as containers for food caches on the land.
One of the most frustrating facets of tourism in Manitoba is the most famous park in the province is all but off limits to human visitors.
Wapusk National Park exists primarily to protect the polar bears that hang out along the coast of Hudson Bay and build their summer dens several kilometres away from shore.
CHOTEAU - Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, the saying goes. Same holds true for bear traps. Just ask Bob Facklam of Choteau.
Facklam, owner of Teton Welding, builds bear traps - big ones. He builds traps for all kinds of bears - from black bears all the way up to polar bears. These are not the huge steel-jawed leg hold traps you see hanging on the walls in restaurants and bars.
World-Class, First-of-its-Kind Research Conservation Centre to be Built:
Selinger
Polar-bear rehabilitation, research and public education will be the focus
of the first-of-its-kind, world-class International Polar Bear Conservation
Centre, Premier Greg Selinger said today during a snow-turning ceremony to
announce $1 million in provincial funding for the Assiniboine Park
Conservancy, the first part of a $31-million provincial commitment.
Manitoba may have just a handful of polar bears by 2035, as the world's leading experts on the iconic Arctic species believe the bears that summer around Churchill are doomed.
The Western Hudson Bay subpopulation of polar bears, estimated at 935 animals in 2004, is expected to decline over the next 25 to 30 years to the point where there are not enough bears to sustain a breeding population, predicts University of Alberta biologist Ian Stirling, who's been studying polar bears for 37 years.
Ursus maritimus—otherwise known as the polar bear—has had one bear of a month. First, a new study predicted a rapid decline in the Canadian polar bear population. As soon as next year. And by as much as 30 percent.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a hunter shot and killed a hybrid grizzly-polar bear—dubbed the "grolar bear"—an emerging type of bear mutt that scientists say is proof that climate change-induced Arctic ice melting is forcing the furry white giants to interbreed.
A mathematical analysis for the first time has uncovered the prospect of a sudden, dramatic decline among Canadian polar bears as they starve to death.
“This is much, much different. This is not a gradual change,” said Dr. Andrew Derocher, one of the world’s leading polar bear authorities and co-author of the study. “We’re looking at a decrease by 20 or 30 per cent or even much more in a year.”
The study was released this week just as Environment Canada is meeting to decide, also for the first time, whether polar bears should be declared a species at risk.
ULUKHAKTOK/HOLMAN - Robert Kuptana has been hunting polar bears for decades but last Tuesday was the first time he saw a brown bear running across the sea ice.
"Why would a grizzly bear be hunting seals?" he said. "It's a land animal. They wait for fish in rivers."
The Inuvialuit elder was Ski-Dooing outside of Minto Inlet hunting for polar bears when he spotted the brownish-coloured bear in the midst of a group of a couple hundred seals half a kilometre ahead of him.
People have had a natural affinity for certain animal species dating to the cave paintings and petroglyphs of early human cultures.
No North American animals are more iconic than polar bears, grizzly bears, wolves, bald eagles, bison and ravens.
Two young guests get close-up views of Hudson, a 3-year-old polar bear, in the underwater viewing area at Brookfield Zoo's new Great Bear Wilderness exhibit.
Some communities in Alaska are finding that the once-permanent but now receding Arctic sea ice is stranding some unwelcome visitors - of the polar bear kind. Researchers recently found that disappearing sea ice habitat (which is preferred by polar bears) is leading to unprecedented numbers of polar bears stressed out, stranded on land and wandering into human territory that they once avoided. To deal with the problem, some towns and villages are setting up polar bear patrols to guard human settlements.
Biologists in the Northwest Territories have confirmed that an unusual-looking bear shot earlier this month near Ulukhaktok, N.W.T., was a rare hybrid grizzly-polar bear.
The unusual-looking bear caught the attention of biologists after David Kuptana, an Inuvialuit hunter, shot and killed it on April 8 on the sea ice just west of the Arctic community, formerly known as Holman.
FAIRBANKS — As long-term climate models predict declining amounts of sea ice in the Arctic, a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher believes the change could bring an unexpected result — more inter-species breeding among mammals that live in the far north.
Brendan Kelly, a marine biology professor at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center, said the presence of sea ice has resulted in the isolation of numerous animals in the Arctic during the past 10,000 years or more. Those animals have evolved gradually into distinct species, such as walruses, ringed seals and polar bears.
Polar bears and grizzly bears, two mighty beasts of the Canadian wilderness, could soon be battling over territory. Hungry grizzly bears are increasingly encroaching on their northern counterparts' territory in Northern Manitoba, according to experts.
Biologists affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History and City College of the City University of New York have found that grizzly bears are roaming into what was traditionally thought of as polar bear habitat -- and into the Canadian province of Manitoba, where they are officially listed as extirpated. The preliminary data was recently published in Canadian Field Naturalist and shows that sightings of Ursus arctos horribilis in Canada's Wapusk National Park are recent and appear to be increasing in frequency.
An environmental group is distributing hundreds of thousands of free condoms with hopes that it will educate the public about the impact of human overpopulation on endangered species. The condoms are enclosed in colorful packaging bearing images of endangered species like polar bears, jaguars and the Puerto Rico rock frog. The images are accompanied by slogans like "Wrap with care, save the polar bear," and "Cover your tweedle, save the burying beetle."
Nunavut's environment minister has rejected a wildlife regulator's recommendation for how many polar bears should be hunted in the Baffin Bay region.
The current quota allows the killing of 105 bears a year in the region, which stretches from Baffin Island in Nunavut to northern Greenland.
The territorial government asked the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in 2008 to consider a smaller bear harvest or a hunting moratorium in the region.
Kevin Burke was guiding a group of tourists along the shores of western Hudson Bay in late November when he spotted six bears in the distance.
Initially, he didn't know what to make of the small female among them that was bluff-charging a bigger bear in a stand of willows. But once the tundra vehicle got up close, he quickly discovered why the animals were so excited.
"First, I saw the pool of blood on the icy pond. Then I saw a male bear with something in its mouth. And then, when it turned towards us, I realized, 'Uh-oh, that's the head of a cub.' The mother was desperately trying to save it, while the rest of the bears were trying to get in on the action and feed on the remains. It was all over by that point. There was almost nothing left of it when we got there."
Callers to Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.'s polar bear hotline have spoken and they're saying bear populations are booming. Paul Irngaut, a wildlife advisor with NTI, said he's interviewed 35 hunters through the hotline. They report signs of climate change, including thinning sea ice, but say that polar bears are adapting to the changes-and thriving, Irngaut said. "Yes climate change is happening, but [hunters] don't feel it's going to have a negative impact on polar bears," Irngaut said Monday. "Polar bears hunt on land, they hunt on open water."
A long-term study showing the changes in habitat associations of polar bears in response to sea ice conditions in the southern Beaufort Sea has implications for polar bear management in Alaska.
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