Churchill update: "yet another year of early freezeup"

Polar Bear Blog – The Complicated World of Freeze-up

This has been yet another year of early freezeup or, if you like, a return to the old ‘normal’.
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Once the heavy ice hits in December and January, the bears chances of a successful hunt really dry up. In fact, bears spend much of mid-winter in ‘walking hibernation’ just like they do in summer.
...For the most part, the bears were in good condition (Manitoba Conservation reported that many of their larger bears were around 150lbs heavier than last year).
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Still, these last two season have really put an exclamation mark on what all of the local polar bear guys believe up here: we have not reached a ‘tipping point’ with Churchill’s polar bears, they are not starving, the numbers are not crashing and it is not necessary to remove them from the wild and place them in captivity.