Update from Polar Bear Alley - Polar Bear News from Churchill, Manitoba

Today, we filmed the shore ice and filmed polar bears walking out on the ice, testing its strength and looking for seals. We probably saw about eight bears walking west, into the wind, towards town or maybe Button Bay (the very first place to freeze in this area). So, if we're lucky, there might be another week of bears (since the ice is still a little woozy) but probably not in the numbers seen this weekend, thirty to forty bears the last few days. Brians' bears stay a little longer, he'll be a popular guy for the next couple weeks, I would think...

If nothing changes and this is an early freeze-up then this could be the best year for polar bears in at least a decade, maybe even the best since the early nineties and the Mount Pinatubo bears. Two to three weeks extra on the ice in summer and a week early on the ice in the fall, this is a good thing for bears. Of course, it is warmer than normal, freezing rain today, a possible sign of global warming just to complicate things - but here's a little twist on that, cold burns fat and a warmer fall should mean less energetic demands on bears that are already in very good shape - the bears are fat this year, even now. So, provided that next summer is not an insanely early breakup, this could be the perfect storm for bears. I predict high cub survival (there are many two year old cubs with moms this year), high sub-adult survival and probably high birth rate, likely with more than a few occurrences of triplets. Oh and the polar bears' penises will be very large this year as well. So there.