Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Conservation officers find more polar bear dens near Manitoba-Ontario boundary - Winnipeg Free Press
WINNIPEG - Manitoba conservation officials have stumbled across a pleasant surprise — a large number of polar bear dens along the Hudson Bay coast near the Ontario boundary...
The aerial survey estimated the western Hudson Bay bear population at around 1,000.

That's about the same number of bears found in a more detailed study done in 2004. That study, which physically tagged the bears, predicted the number would decline to about 650 by 2011.
Polar Bear Blog – New Polar Bear Denning Area Located Along Hudson Bay | Polar Bear Alley – Guide to the Polar Bears of Churchill
This is fantastic news, really...I find it increasingly hard to believe that the population is currently crashing – maybe Canadian Wildlife Service is just looking in the wrong places… who knows. At this point, I am still awaiting their new population study – that one should be equally interesting…

Now, I kind of doubt the population growing but I really think its still around 1000-1200 bears like its been for the last twenty years or so… just seems to be the carrying capacity of this area – of course, that was also before we had confirmed a new denning area…

1 comment:

JLS said...

First person account reports lots of polar bears in Greenland this year too. From the August archives.

http://www.polarfield.com/blog/bears-thule/