Polar Bear Quota Increased

Polar bear hunting season has started on Baffin Island almost a month earlier than usual. This year, the Inuit will harvest up to 32 males and nine females up from the usual limit of 16 males and seven females. The Davis Strait population of polar bears is one of the few that all parties (NGOs, science and Inuit) agree is increasing.

The increase in the Davis Strait population is both on account of changing ice patterns/good ice seasons in the eastern Arctic but also from an explosion of seal populations. I have heard that since the seal harvest was reduced in Newfoundland/Labrador that Harp Seal populations have not only increased dramatically in that area but have spread north.

Polar Bear Blog – What Are Hudson Bay’s Polar Bears up to in the New Year?

Either way, the best a polar bear can hope for right now is a mild winter – it is a bit of a fallacy that bears need the extreme cold. They seem to prefer mid-range temperatures (mid-range for us northerners being -20C). In fact, polar bears simply hunker down during blizzards (yes, they are adapted to exist in -40 blizzards but no one actually likes -40 blizzards… except for maybe ravens who on the surface do not appear to be adapted for it at all).

Polar Bear Blog – January 20 2011 – Minus Fifties For a Bit

Windchill in Churchill today is somewhere in the minus fifties. Of course, once you are in the minus fifties, it doesn’t matter much whether it is -53 or -57. They are calling for winds gusting up to 60km/hr (which is really still just moderate winds for the coast of Hudson Bay) but when your ambient temperature is already closing in on minus forty, it gets pretty intense.