Richard Collins: Warming Arctic sees polar bears spending more time on shore
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About 150 souls live in Wales — a coastal village on the Alaskan side of the Bering Strait.
On January 17 last, Summer Myomick and her one-year-old son were walking near the school there. According to an AP News report, there was a snowstorm at the time and the 24-year-old mother failed to notice that a polar bear was stalking them. It attacked. Locals tried to drive it off using shovels, but the bear turned and chased them into the school. Myomick and her child were mauled to death before the bear could be shot.
There had not been a fatal such attack in Wales for 30 years. A bear entering the village in the depths of winter is most unusual; all are normally far out on the pack-ice hunting seals. Why wasn’t this one out there?
Climate change may have led to the tragedy: global warming works in insidious ways. Polar bears depend on seals for food but they need ice-cover to catch them. A bear will lie in wait above a hole in the ice, waiting to pounce on a seal which surfaces for breath or hauls out to rest. Hunting must cease when the ice melts.
The polar seas are warming at an alarming rate. The ice is melting more rapidly, and earlier, each year. Areas which used to be covered in winter are now ice-free. Bears find it increasingly difficult to hunt successfully and they have a shorter season in which to do so. Did hunger cause the Wales intruder to head for the village?
Young and very old bears suffer most in lean times. Examination of its carcass showed that the Wales killer was in poor condition. There was no sign of rabies or any other condition which might have disposed it to attack. A bear’s age can be determined from a tooth. The animal was probably old but tooth analysis has yet to be completed.
Meanwhile, the plight of polar bears continues to worsen in Canada. According to John Whiteman of the Polar Bears Society, their numbers in the Western Hudson Bay area fell by 27% between 2016 and 2021. The adult male population has "changed little" but "there are fewer adult females with cubs", he says.
" As the Arctic warms, bears are spending more time on shore" and conflict with people is "a growing problem".
Starving bears have taken to raiding seabird nests. Others are trying to catch geese and targeting walrus herds. They are relying increasingly on land-based foods, instead of their normal marine ones. According to a US Geological Survey team, this is leading to poor health and early deaths. Some experts predict that, at current global warming rates, two-thirds of today’s polar bear population will be gone by 2050.
Human fatalities due to bears are still exceedingly rare. Seventy-three wild bear attacks were recorded across the five polar bear states (Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and the US) between 1870 and 2014, resulting in 20 deaths and 63 injuries. "Nutritionally-stressed adult males" posed the greatest threat. Females tended to attack only in defence of cubs.
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